SKETCH OF THE CONIFERS OF JAPAX. 651 



«ute from tbat by which we had come. The road led us trough 

 ihe same liind of scenery which I have endeavoured to describe 



■mountaitts^ nothing but mountains, deep valleys and granite 

 land clay slate rocks — now bleak and barren, and now richly 

 covered with forests chiefly consisting of Oaks and Pines. We 

 arrived at the monastery just as it was getting dark. My friends 

 the priests were waiting for me at the entrance, and anxiously 

 inquired what success had attended us during the day. I told 

 them the trees at Quanting iv^ere just like their own — destitute 

 of cones. * Ah/ said they, for my consolation, ^ next year there 

 will be plenty.' 



^^J cannot agree with Dr. Lindley in calliug this an Abies, 

 tinless Cedars and Larches are also referred to the same genu3» 

 It is apparently a plant exactly intermediate between the Cedar 

 mid Larch; it has deciduous scales like the Cedar ^S and deciduous 

 leaves like the Larch, and a habit somewhat of the one and some- 

 ■^liat of the other. However, it is a noble tree, it produces 

 excellent timbei', will be very ornamentel in park scenery, and I 

 tave no doubt will prove perfectly hardy in England." — Gardenen ' 

 Chronicle, 1855, p, 644. 



. When joung it should be kept in the shade, and \\lien planted 

 out it should be placed on hilly or undulating land — any land on 

 which the Larch succeeds. 



It looks tender, but has been found perfectly hardy by Mr. 

 Bohn, at Richmond, and at Mr. Qrierss Waterhead Nursery, 

 Ambleside, near Windermere, who records it as havm;^ stood the 

 severe winter of 1860 uninjured. 



This is to us the most interesting and curious of the whole fir 

 tribe, not lilone ft'om its beauty aud personal peculiarities, but 

 from the puzzling nature of its affinities, and the difficulty of 

 assigning it its true place among its fellows. It has undoubtedly 

 9 close relation to the Larch and Cedar. Its leaves are dis- 

 posed as in them, singly on the young branchlets, in verticillate 

 'clusters on the older ones. As in them, the leaves are deciduous ; 

 and the pulviui and phyllulse and older bark are sufficiently like 

 those of the Larch, altliough the former are larger. The older 



Mr. Fortune is wrong here. The Cedar has not deciduous scales; 

 indeed that is one of the chief characters which have been assigned to it by 

 ejstematists (see Endlicher, &c.j, and Dr. Lindley was quite right in calling 

 it an AbieSj using that as the generic name and treating the minor subdivi- 

 sions of Picea, LariXy &c., as merely subgeneric. 



