208 TAXODINE^ AND ARAUCARINE^ 



was introduced in 1857, and the few places where it 

 has made any show seem to be the warmer and more 

 humid parts of the country, in Cornwall, in Ireland, 

 especially at such particularly favoured places as 

 Castlewelan, County Down (Earl Annesley), where it 

 has enjoyed all the advantages of care, culture, and 

 climate. Its name is derived from the Greek words 

 a6p6o<; (crowded) and rd^c^i (arrangement). It is a 

 native of Tasmania and a native of no other place. It 

 once existed, or something very like it, so geological 

 research and deposits assert, in the Eocene period in 

 Great Britain. All we can say, in its return journey 

 back, after many million years, to its once native 

 habitat among us, it seems signally to have failed 

 to retouch the Happy Isles. 



There are three of these trees, and all to be met 

 with on only the most infrequent of occasions. The 

 A. Cupressoides, with its smaller cones, with its 

 closely appressed leaves, has for all the world the 

 character of the leaf-attached Cypress, from which 

 it takes its descriptive second title. 



Then there is the A. Laxifolia, of an intermediate 

 resemblance, as to size of cone and length of leaf, 

 between the other two. Possibly a hybrid origin 

 may be responsible for this appearance. 



They are generally spoken of as Cypress Trees, but 

 the A. Selaginoides, with its much thicker incurved 

 leaves, rather calls to mind some of those Araucarias 

 that we can in England only see in the Temperate 

 House at Kew. I refer to the A. Cunninghamia, the 

 Queensland Moreton Bay Pine, and perhaps others 

 labelled Rulei and Goldieana, trees that are strangers 

 in our land, but that look to the amateur observer 

 as showing a suspicious leaf affinity to the trees of 

 our subject in question. In point of fact, it is their 

 cone differences which forbid the banns of Arau- 

 carinian relationship. By authorities they are ac- 



