50 



BOTANY. 



This splendid species was introduced into England many years since by Douglas, and is now so 

 generally cultivated and well known that any lengthy description of it is unnecessary. It is also 

 so well marked by its short, rigid, acute leaves and large ornamental cones, that it is not likely 

 to be confounded with any other species now known. My own observations do not, however, 

 fully accord with those which have been published in regard to it ; and the specimens which I 

 brought home differ so much from those before obtained from the same region, and from each 

 other, that it seems necessary that these differences should be indicated. 



Fig. 17. 

 Fig. 17. Cone, scales, and seeds of P. nobilis, half natural size. 

 Fig. 17a. Leaf of do., natural size. 



The accompanying figure (fig. 17) very accurately represents (half size) a cone obtained from 

 a young tree in the Cascade mountains, 150 miles south of the Columbia. It will be seen that 

 it differs from those figured by Lambert, Nuttall, and Loudon, (1. c.,) by being less com- 

 pletely covered by the reflected bracts, and by the form of the bracts, which are much less fim- 

 briated, and are expanded into rounded wings on either side of the elongated point. The 

 scales, seeds, and wings correspond very well with those figured. 



The figure now given was made with great care by an excellent artist, J. H. Richard, and 

 may be accepted as a copy of nature, even to the exact size and form of every bract. If the 

 figure given by Nuttall and Lambert is equally"true to nature, we have here evidence of con- 

 siderable variation in the organs which have been considered the most distinctive character of 

 the tree. Loudon's figure (1. c.) is evidently not intended to be an accurate representation of 

 the subject, but only to give the general effect of the reflexed and fimbriated bracts. In his 

 description, drawn from Douglas' specimen, Loudon represents the leaves as 2-rowed ; while 

 in my specimen the leaves are in many rows, so thickly set on all sides of the branches that 

 their bases are separated by spaces no larger than they occupy ; nor are they trigonal, as those 

 described by Loudon, but quadrangular, without any longitudinal furrow. 



A large cone was brought to me from the base of Mount Hood by Mr. C. D. Anderson, which 

 I could refer to no other tree than this ; and yet the bracts, though similar in form to those of 



