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21 
Brief allusion was made to the Wild Plum and Pear, neither 
of which could be considered true natives ; and then the Common 
Elm was classed among the trees which were not indisputably 
indigenous. By many authorities it was considered to be one of 
the species we owe to the Romans. The fact of its rarely being 
produced from seeds was mentioned, and the Lecturer said he 
had seen a seedling of it on a wall in Buckinghamshire. The 
tree is so frequent in Central England, that he thought it worth 
while to show a series of photographs in order to evince what a 
factor it was in our rural scenery. Specimens were shewn of the 
Elms at Bensington, the Childswell Elm near Oxford, the Elms at 
Medmenhan, at Bisham, at Mongewell (which were figured by 
Strutt), at Great Marlow, the Broad Walk at Oxford, as well as 
some covered with hoar frost, which excellently brought out the 
repeatedly branching character so typical of our British forest 
trees. 
The Sweet Chestnut (Castanea) was next described, and it 
was stated that this had the honour of being the largest tree 
known, the Great Chestnut of Mount Etna being no less than 66 
feet in diameter, the next largest being Zaxedium Mexicanum, the 
Mexican Cedar, which has been found 52 feet across, and there-- 
fore much larger than the tree of the Western States of America, 
the Wellingtonea gigantea, which, however, is less than forty feet 
through, even in its finest examples. Incidentally the Lecturer 
mentioned that this We//ingtonea was moreover not the tallest 
tree, although specimens 462 feet had been measured ; but these 
fell short of the Eucalyptus amygdalinus, the Peppermint tree of 
Australia, which had been known to attain the enormous height 
of 494 feet, therefore taller than any stone building in the Old 
World. 
The Lecturer then proceeded to describe some trees which 
belonged to the class Gymnosperms, that is, in which the ovules 
were naked. Till recently they had been merged with the 
Dicotyledons but, as a matter of fact, they had more than two, 
sometimes, and not unusually six cotyledons. Moreover their 
alliance was rather with the Equisetums, and they belonged to 
that class of plants which was so largely represented in the 
Carboniferous era. 
Of the introduced species which are now so plentiful, he first 
shewed and described the Cedar of Lebanon, which was brought 
into Britain from Syria between 1650 and 1680. Photographs of 
this magnificent tree from Beil House were shewn, and allusion 
made to the fine specimens at Blenheim. 
The Larch next received attention. This deciduous conifer 
was introduced about 1620, and to Scotland in 1738, and a 
photograph of the original trees at Dunkeld was shewn—in a - 
century one of them had attained a height of 100 feet—and it was 
_ Stated that the Dukes of Atholl had planted on their estates 
upwards of 14,000,000 trees ina century. Photographs of the 
