22 PINES 



It is so called for the obvious reason that its twigs 

 snap upon the slightest provocation. 



This Willow, then, may be said to represent the 

 extreme party of the inflexibles, while the Pine in 

 subject may be regarded as representing extremists 

 of the opposition and the most flexible examples 

 of tree structure. 



If, then, in our walks we come up against a mys- 

 terious low-growing Pine, with five leaves in a bundle, 

 directed upwards (not pendulous), of from 2| to 3 in. 

 long, not quite so thickly situated on its yellow-grey 

 branchlets as, for instance, the above-mentioned 

 Cembra or the Foxtail Pines (P. Aristata and P. 

 Balfouriana), then may our suspicions be strongly 

 grounded for believing that we have run to his place 

 upon earth the Stone Pine from America's Rocky 

 Mountains. 



If we were wishful to make assurance doubly sure, 

 we might go so far as to take a leaf home and put it 

 under the tell-tale influence of a microscope. If by 

 that process we failed to discern a vestige of jagged 

 serrulation on its leaves, it would indeed be a case 

 of Q.E.D. and our suspicions turned into certainty. 

 This bending competition is what we should cordially 

 recommend as of most powerful avail in arriving 

 at a recognition of this rarely seen tree — to say 

 nothing of the diversion it would afford to the ex- 

 perimentalists in making a trial of this peculiar 

 quality. 



P. Albicaulis. — Specimens of this tree are still 

 fewer and farther between, if possible, than its 

 predecessors of the group. A few of them have been 

 tried at Kew and also at Leonardslee, and grow, as 

 is the way with this little coterie, slowly but, so far 

 they have grown there, surely. 



It is evidently almost a facsimile in appearance to 



