THE GINKGO 



that a child would draw ; it is a clumsy attempt at one, and 

 very different from the exquisite irregularity of the ash or 

 oak. 



Its leaves are especially curious : they cover the branches 

 very closely, and are hard, rigid, and spiny. Its cones, 

 though of the nature of pine-cones, are yet quite unique. 

 The seeds are edible, and used to be an important article of 

 diet to the Indians on the slopes of the Chilian Andes, 

 where monkey-puzzle forests used to exist. This of course 

 is a very out-of-the-way region ; other species of Araucaria 

 are found scattered about the world in a most perplexing 

 manner. One kind grows in Norfolk Island, in the Pacific ; 

 another occurs in the inner mountainous districts of Brazil ; 

 there are some in Australia and others in New Caledonia. 



But in the Jurassic period of geology, in the age of 

 ammonites and gigantic lizards and crocodiles, Araucarias 

 were the regular, ordinary trees. They grew all over Europe, 

 and apparently as far north as Greenland, and, indeed, seem 

 to have existed everywhere. 



Perhaps the spiny leaves discouraged some huge lizard, 

 perhaps Atlantosaurus himself (he was thirty feet high and 

 one hundred feet long), from browsing on its branches. 

 Perhaps the Pterodactyls, those extraordinary bird or bat- 

 like lizards, used to feed upon the seeds of the monkey- 

 puzzle, and carried them in their toothed jaws to New 

 Caledonia, Australia, and Norfolk Island. Other improved 

 types have driven the monkey-puzzles from Europe, Asia, and 

 Africa, and taken their places, but in out-of-the-way districts 

 of South America and Australia they are still able to hold 

 their own. 



An ally of theirs, the Ginkgo or Maidenhair tree, seems to 

 have been extremely common in certain geological periods. 



57 



