263 
as No. 40 * Quercus calliprinos, Webb, var.’’ To unravel the con- 
fusion it will be necessary to see the original field labels. At any 
rate, so much is certain that the Sindian occurs in the Cilician 
Taurus and that Q. Fenzlit is either in part or in toto identical 
with it. I may here add that Kotschy collected im the same region 
another oak of the *‘ coccifera’’ group which he identified with 
Q. rigida of Willd. (Spec. Pl. iv. 404), and figured on t. 8 of his 
folio work. It has all the appearance of Q. calliprinos except for 
the usually intensely glaucous underside of the leaves. Will- 
denow’s plant was collected by C. Schwarz in “ Caramania,”’ 
which means no doubt in this case the western continuation of the 
Cilician Taurus and its foothills. A. de Candolle (l.c. 56) 
reduced it to a variety (K) of Q. calliprinos, and it may indeed 
represent only an excessive xerophytic condition of the latter. 
According to Kotschy it is not uncommon near Giilek Boghaz. 
Boissier (Flor. Or. iv. 1879; p. 1169), treats our oak under the 
yarieties calliprinos (including Q. Fenzlii), pseudococcifera and 
palaestina of Q. coccifera, distinguishing them mainly by the 
phylaries whether they are erect and more or less appressed or 
more or less spreading or squarrosely recurved or finally “ eximie 
retrofractae.’’ Post (Flor. Syria and Palestine, 1896; p. 739), 
follows Boissier, including, however, the var. palaestina under 
var. pseudococcifera 
It seemed worth while to make an attempt to get at an approxi- 
mate estimate of the age of the famous Sindian of Hebron. For 
that purpose the following data were available. J.D. Hooker on 
the authority of Porter who measured it about 1850, gives the 
girth of the trunk of the tree as 23 ft. A somewhat excentric 
section of a trunk or more likely a branch of a Sindian oak from 
Hebron in the Museum at Kew (Vester coll. no. 34), has 37 annual 
rings. The first 10 rings show over the longest radius an annual 
average increment of 3 mm., the following 5 of 1-9 mm., and the 
remaining 22 which are fairly evenly distant of 15 mm. Assum- 
ing that the trunk of the tree grew after the first 30 years at an 
average rate of 1:5 mm., the age of the tree may be estimated 
roughly at 700 years. This would make the date of the starting 
of the tree the year 1150 or thereabouts, that is the time of the 
Second Crusade. It is therefore not surprising that we hear 
nothing of it for a very long time after. Even Belon, a very keen 
observer and naturalist, who visited Hebron in 1548 does not 
