
19 
WEDNESDAY, MAY 11TH, 1904. 
British Crees. 
Mr. G. CLARIDGE DRUCE, M.A, (Oxon), 
EES: 
(Author of “The Flora of Oxfordshire and Berkshire ’”’), 
WitH LANTERN ILLUSTRATIONS. 
HE Lecturer first described the four classes of the Vegetable 
Kingdom,—Dicotyledons, Monocotyledons, Gymnosperms, 
and Acotyledons, in order to explain that only two of these, the 
first and the third, were represented in Britain; but he showed, 
in order to illustrate the growth of monocotyledonous trees, a 
photograph of the great Dragon Tree of Orotava, Teneriffe 
(Calamus Draco), which had been said was the oldest tree in the 
world, its age having been estimated at as much as 6,000 years, 
but the Lecturer was inclined to put it at not more than 2,000 
years. ‘The tree is now destroyed; from it was obtained a resin 
known as Dragon’s Blood, much in use as a colouring agent. 
The other tree illustrated was the Seychelle Island Palm, the 
fruit of which, known as the double cocoa-nut or Coco de la Mer, 
was for a long time the theme of much controversy, as the origin 
- was unknown, the fruit being cast up by the seas on the Indian 
coast, was supposed by some to be a fossil, by others as the fruit 
of some gigantic water plant, until the discovery of the Seychelle 
Islands off the African coast explained the problem. These 
photographs shewed the comparatively simple stem of this class 
as compared with the branching characters of our forest trees ; 
and this was true to a great extent also of the Tree Ferns, of 
which a photograph of Dicksonia antarctica was shewn. The 
_ height of a monocotyledonous tree, even of the Palms, was rarely 
over 250 feet, while Tree Ferns, even gigantic Tree Ferns, were 
_ rarely over 60 feet. 
The Lecturer said that it was not quite easy to define what 
Was meant bya tree. Morrison, the first Oxford Professor of 
Botany, included in his unpublished work, written about 1680, 
all woody perennials in his ‘‘ Arbores,” but the Lecturer said he 
should take as his standard a tree which attained the height of not 
