ORIGIN OF NAME STROBUS 9 



earlier day. We can recall peg-tops, whipping-tops, 

 and humming-tops, and probably there are many 

 more revolving tops than these, whose existence has 

 escaped our memories. What was the shape of a 

 standardized Roman top in the Augustan Era it 

 would be presumptuous to hazard opinion upon; 

 but if it was more or less the same sort of top as its 

 Great Britain representative of the Victorian Era — 

 that is to say, a sort of top-heavy-shaped object, 

 sometimes answering the description of pear-shaped, at 

 others and by others described, as an inverted conoid, 

 with a weighty head supported by a slender peg — 

 there would, I imagine, among Mediterranean Pines be 

 claimants in number for the honour of a name con- 

 ferred by such a celebrity, since many a Pine in those 

 regions assumes a shape consonant with this rather 

 discursive description. Personally, I should have 

 looked to the P. Pinea to turn up the winner among 

 all other competitors. 



Whether it is an ascertained truism that Pliny's 

 Strobus and Linnaeus 's Weymouth Pine are one and 

 the same is a point of evidence that we do not believe 

 even the great Swede himself, with all his glory, and 

 founder of the Linnean Society, who christened it or 

 rechristened it some 1700 years and more after 

 Pliny's day, could conscientiously have sworn 

 affidavit upon. But why cavil at a name that is 

 both brief and easily spelt, and so long as it distin- 

 guishes, and creates no confusion of mind ? 



There is a provoking similitude both of cones and 

 leaves in the construction of four at least of this 

 group (P. Excelsa, Peuke, Monticola, and Strobus), 

 which calls for a strained docility on the part of the 

 ordinary student. The points of difference in some 

 cases are so slight that they belong rather to that 

 class of subtle intricacies that many do not care to 

 tackle. Those there are who only can, or only 



