253 
DESCRIPTION OP A NEW CONIFEK FllOM ARCTIC 
AMERICA. 
By Andrew Murray, Esq., F.L.S. 
(Plate LXIX.) 
Abies akctica, A. alba affinis, foliis crassioribus, strobilis mino- 
ribus, squamis subrotundatis, bracteis triangularibus, diguoscitur. 
Hab. In America boreal!, prope Behring's Straits. 
Nearly allied to Abies alba, but differs in the following particulars : — 
the pulvini are broader, and the leaves thicker than in it; the stomata 
are larger, and not so distinctly in rows ; the cones are smaller and 
shorter; the scales are differently shaped, being rounded in front in- 
stead of nearly straight; the bracts are acute and triangular instead of 
^ J ing sheaf-shaped. The different parts are contrasted in the Plate. 
This is the most northerly tree that has been met with on the 
north-west coast of America. It was found in the voyage of H.M.S. 
Herald forming forests on the banks of the rivers Noatak (Bedford 
Km!) and Buckland (Berthold Seemann !), on the American side of 
Behring's Straits. This latitude is nearly seven degrees further north 
la] i the limits of the woods on the eastern side of the American 
continent. 
Dr. Seemann, in his 'Botany of the Herald,' mentions that some of 
the trees measured by Lieutenant Bedford Pirn, R.N., were from 
enty to fifty feet high, and from four to five feet in circumference. 
actions of these are preserved in the museum of the Royal Botanic 
wdens at Kew, and specimens of the foliage and cones are preserved 
1,1 the herbaria at Kew and the British Museum. 
r - Seemann records this species as Abies alba. He seems, how- 
Ver > to have had some doubts about its being so, although he finally 
Evinced himself that the strange aspect of the specimens, and the 
ln which they differed from specimens grown in more genial 
€8, were merely owing to physical influence "which in this case, 
11 many others, stamps upon the species the true Arctic character.'* 
- ° one will dispute that it is the climatic and other physical influ- 
lces of the regions where it grows which have stamped its character 
P°n it, but it does not follow that therefore that character is not 
P^Ac. It appears to me that the differences have crossed the boim- 
as m 
] 
T 
