NAME OF SCIADOPITYS VERTICILLATA 223 



mono-typical distinction and to enter into a kingdom 

 of its own, we should have thought that in this most 

 curious of trees, that answered to the most prolonged 

 and curious of names, we should have found a winning 

 candidate. 



The meaning of its name, after usual processes of 

 investigation and translation and various other 

 prosodian researches, reads ** Whorled Umbrella 

 Pine." 



This etymological result is arrived at and explained 

 by the indisputable fact that in the Greek language 

 the word aKid means shade, and that the word aKLd<i, 

 in a sort of natural sequence, implies anything that 

 is used for the purpose of shading. The Latin 

 word representing a- km is umbra, hence umbrella ; 

 which, if we are indulging in dreams of derivations, 

 was an article of modern use evolved from this Latin 

 word umbra. Personally, I must' say that I never 

 understood, in my educational days, that the Greeks 

 in the days of Athenian culture or in any Graeco- 

 Roman times, used umbrellas, but in a modern-day 

 sense the word " umbrella " can be regarded as a fair, 

 if somewhat a loose, translation of the Greek word 



It must be further impressed that this tree was not 

 designated as an Umbrella Pine for the same reason 

 that the Pinus Pinea, Stone or Umbrella Pine — the 

 tree immortalized by Turner, Claude, and other 

 landscape painters of Italian scenery — was so called. 

 It was not on account of the fact that at a landscape 

 distance it assumes the sheltering shape of a modern 

 Mother Gamp, but for the far less sublime reason 

 that its green should-be leaves (more correctly called 

 Phylloids or Qadodes), resemble the shape of the 

 ribs or spikes of the modern umbrella ; that part of 

 the anatomy of the article in question which school- 

 boys were wont — in the memory and practical experi- 



