2to TAXODINE.E AND ARAUCARINE^ 



of the leaves of a Yew is two-rowed, so is the dis- 

 position of the leaves upon the Deciduous Cypress ; 

 and, for the matter of that, upon a good many other 

 trees besides them. There the likeness to the Yew 

 begins, and there it ends. Other points, even of 

 remotest resemblance, as far as impressionistic ap- 

 pearance is concerned, do not exist. No one within 

 the memory of man, even with a head the most 

 impregnable to teaching, or an eye the most unper- 

 fected for taking observation, could have ever 

 mistaken the one for the other, or ever did. The 

 deciduous, light, feathery leaf of the one, with its 

 indescribable spring colouring of its own particular 

 iridescent shade of hue, and, on the other hand, the 

 Yew with its almost precisely different — as poles 

 asunder — habits, and its murky, dark green, ever- 

 green ways, both tell their stories of life with un- 

 mistakable meaning. What the omnipotent name- 

 givers could have been thinking about when they 

 dispensed this Latin prescription of name, unless it 

 were for an express purpose of mystifying the mind 

 of more uninstructed man, we cannot think. An 

 unsophisticated Welshman might be pardonably 

 excused if he expressed himself on the subject in 

 customary idiom. In goodness' name, indeed, we 

 do wonder and for what ! 



Since the days of Montezuma and by historians of 

 those times it has gone by the name of Cypress 

 (Linnaeus named it Cupressus Disticha), and in spite 

 of the fact that for some occult unorthodoxies it has 

 been dismissed the ranks, the old description 

 Cypress still clings, and the tree is still traded with 

 under its name, notwithstanding the fact that, by 

 such action, the fair name of the exclusive family 

 circle of the Cupressineae, from which it has been 

 summaril}^ ejected, may be irretrievably com- 

 promised. 



