Mar. 1891. J BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH. 71 



MEETING OF THE SOCIETY, 

 Thursday, March 12, 1891. 



Egbert Lindsay, President, in the Chair. 



William G. Smith was elected Eesident Fellow of the 

 Society. 



George Hunter, M.D., F.E.C.S.E., was admitted Eesident 

 Fellow of the Society. 



The volume of Transactions of the Society in Session 

 1889-90 (Vol. XVIII.) was laid on the table. The president 

 directed the attention of members to the many interesting 

 and valuable communications contained in it. 



Presents to the Library, Herbarium, and Museum at the 

 Eoyal Botanic Garden were announced. 



Mr Malcolm Dunn exhibited shoots of Sciadopitys verti- 

 cillata, bearing cones, with ripe seeds, from plants grown in 

 Surrey, and remarked that the earliest record of the Umbrella 

 Pine is that of Thunberg, in 1784, who describes it in his 

 Flora Japonica as a species of yew, under the name of 

 Taxus verticillata. Many years after that date its true 

 character was determined by Siebold, who gave it the 

 scientific name it now bears, Sciadopitys verticillata, which is 

 a literal translation of the popular Japanese name, " Parasol 

 Pine." In Veitch's Manual of the Coniferae, 1881, it is said 

 that " its restricted habitat and comparative paucity of 

 numbers are significant facts in its present condition. Found 

 wild only in one locality of limited extent — on Mount 

 Kojasanin, in the Island of Nippon — and in proximity to a 

 dense population in a country in which the forests are 

 rapidly disappearing, the fate of the Sciadopitys will not 

 remain long in suspense." The tree grows to a height of 

 upwards of 100 feet, with a stem 10 to 12 feet in circum- 



Issued April 1891. 



