87 
friends in the West. Passing over Europe, I must take you as far 
east as China and Japan, and the country north of China proper. 
‘There we have another and a most interesting home of conifers. 
Indeed, Japan in particular is rich in them, having as many as 41 
species, of which number about twenty belong to the country ; 
some of them being true pines and firs, and others arbor vites, 
junipers, yews and kinds allied to yews, with a fruit more or less, 
in appearance, like a plum. The Cryptomeria japonica, already 
spoken of as a favourite tree with the Japanese, may be seen grow- 
ing not far from Folkestone with the Douglas fir and the 
Wellingtonia gigantea as neighbours. Of China, I cannot say more 
than that there are about twenty species, whilst others occur a long 
way up the northern coast. This, then, is 4n interesting fact in 
distribution. The species of East and North-east Asia are quite a 
different lot from those of West and North-west America. There 
‘was most likely a time when the Continents were all united in the 
north, long before the thirty-six miles of water called the Behring’s 
Straits separated Asia from America, and it may be that many 
Species were driven southward during the giacial period. But this 
does not account for so many being peculiar to Japan, and it is 
therefore believed that this country may be a special centre of 
distribution. Of the Himalayas and their conifers, I cannot stop 
to speak. As to India itself, the story is soon told, for no repre- 
sentatives of the order are native there. I wish to touch upon a 
question that comes under the head of physiology. In the main, 
the pollen of the staminate flowers is carried by the wind and 
deposited on the ovules. Usually when the wind is the agent, the 
flowers concerned are without colour and scent. The pollen of 
many conifers is extremely abundant, as may be proved by anyone 
who shakes a branch of any pine when the pollen Is mature. In 
the neighbourhood of pine forests such a quantity of pollen is shed, 
that it has been called ‘sulphur rain.”? A curious provision is 
made for the protection of the pollen, until it is shaken out by the 
wind, when a good deal rises like dust and reaches the young 
cones, which are often on the upper branches of the tree. I have 
looked at a good many small cones in the hope of finding some 
with the scales open, so as to let the poller reach the ovules, but 
the scales seem always to be tightly pressed down. They must, 
however, of course, separate sufficiently for the purpose. When 
the seeds of a pine are ripe and ready to fly away ‘‘on the wings 
of the wind,” supported by their own wings, the scales of the cones 
‘Separate, in some cases springing sharply apart, and away go the 
‘seeds—away they go to find a resting place where they may grow. 
But they do not take their flight in wet weather, for then the 
~woody scales close tightly and shut them in. Thus, you see, it is 
