THE CYCAS AND THE YEW-TREE FAMILIES. 465 



A few other Conifers, not in the Styal collection, occur in gardens, such as the 

 Balm of Gilead Fir (Picea balsamea); the white spruce, or Abies alba, and the 

 evergreen cypress {Cupressus sempervirens ov fastirjiata). In green-houses there 

 are also the richly-beautiful Norfolk Island pine, or Arauearia excelsa, the 

 branches of which are horizontal at first, and afterwards pendulous, and one or 

 two small Ciipressinece. 



CXLVIL— THE CYCAS FAMILY. Cycaddcece. 



The two genera Cycas and Zamia, the former containing about five 

 species, and the latter about seventeen, are all that are known to con- 

 stitute this little but most interesting family, which in different points 

 at once resembles ferns, coniferous trees, and palm-trees. They agree 

 with the palms in their simple and cylindrical stems, bearing a crown 

 of large leaves upon the summit, and, though short in the Zamias, 

 lising in the Cycas circmalts to the height of thirty feet ; conifers they 

 resemble in their seeds and inflorescence, and also in the microscopical 

 characters of the wood ; and ferns they coiTespond with in their large 

 and pinnate leaves, generally circinate while young, and which, when 

 they disarticulate from the trunk, (after the manner of conifers) leave 

 it strongly marked with the lozenge-shaped scales of their broad and 

 woody petioles. They grow chiefly in equinoctial America and Asia, 

 in Madagascar, and at the Cape of Good Hope. 



Two species are commonly found in hot-houses, the Zamia horrida^ 

 and the Cycas circinalis. The latter is usually very small, with a 

 conical yellowish stem about a foot high, and seven or eight inches in 

 diameter, and a terminal and evergreen crown of thirty or forty large 

 finely pinnatifid and fern-like leaves, each two or three feet long, the 

 pinnules very numerous, linear, and exceedingly rigid. 



CXLVni.— THE YEW-TREE FAMILY. Taxdcece. 



The yew-tree, with its congeners, all of which are arborescent, is 

 distinguished from the Conifera) by the ovules being solitary, and 

 unprotected by hardened scales. In other respects the two families 

 closely agree, giving a hand on one side to the noblest exogenous 

 plants, on the other to the noblest of the Cormogens. The stems are 

 branched irregularly ; the leaves usually small, narrow, and evergreen, 



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