294 ARAUCARIA. 



fast disappearing ;. those that formerly existed on the banks of the 

 Manukon river have already been exhausted of all the available 

 timber, and a similar fate awaits those that remain. The process 

 of destruction is often hastened by frequent forest tires by which 

 thousands of the trees perish annually. 



The Kauri Pine is the monarch of the New Zealand forest ; no 

 other timber tree in the colony is applied to so many and varied 

 uses, and its resinous products are scarcely surpassed in value by those 

 of any other coniferous tree. Kauri timber varies in colour from 

 yellowish white to brown ; it is' firm, straight in grain and of great 

 strength, durability and elasticity ; it is used for every purpose for 

 which timber is in request; for building, heavy framework, weather- 

 boarding, bridges, railway-ties, telegraph-posts, every description of 

 joinery and decorative fittings both for public buildings and for private 

 dwellings. The sapwood is excessively charged with resin and possesses 

 great heating power. Kauri Gum, its most valued resinous product, 

 has been already adverted to in page 96. 



AEAUCAEIA. 



Jussieu, Gen. Plant. 413 (1789). Endlicher, Synops. Conif. 184 (1847). Parlatore. D. C. 

 Prodr. XVI. 369 (1868). Bentham and Hooker, Gen. Plant. III. 437 (1881). Eichler in 

 Engler and Prantl, Nat. Pfl. Fani. 67 (1887). Masters in Jouru. Linn. Soc. XXX. 26 (1893). 



The Araucarias are massive evergreen trees with lofty trunks from 

 which the branches are produced in whorls of four to eight, five 

 being the predominant number. During the earlier period of growth 

 the branch.es of most of the species with subulate (awl-shaped) leaves 

 are strictly horizontal and very regularly ramified, the lateral 

 branchlets being evenly placed, gradually shorter from the base to 

 the apex and more or less decurved, rarely rigid and on one plane. 

 This formal but elegant habit renders them useful subjects for the 

 decoration of large conservatories, public halls, etc. In their old age 

 the Araucarias become denuded of the lower branches and have 

 usually flattened or rounded tops of which the branches are irregu- 

 larly developed and sparsely furnished with branchlets and foliage ; 

 in this state the aspect of the trees is described as singular and 

 even grotesque, an effect which is greatly intensified in A. imbricata 

 by its large hedgehog-like cones with which the fertile old trees are 

 often loaded. 



The most obvious generic characters are 



Flowers dioecious, rarely monoecious, lateral or terminal. Staminate 

 flowers in a cone-like or cyliudric mass and consisting of numerous 

 spirally crowded and imbricated stamens, each with six twenty 

 anther-cells in two series, the dehisceuce of which is longitudinal. 



Ovuliferous flowers clavate or sub-globose, composed of many spirally 

 arranged scales in continuous series with the foliage leaves, each bearing 

 a single pendulous ovule that ultimately becomes confluent with the scale. 



