Retrospective Criticism. 



231 



depicted in the paintings of Claude, &c.; the Pinus Cembra assumes a conical 

 shape {fig, 48.) its boughs feathering towards the ground. Your informant 

 might with equal truth and 

 propriety have called the 

 Scotch Pine and the Spruce 

 Fir the same, for the one 

 bears about as much re- 

 semblance to the other as 

 the Stone Pine does to 

 the Cembran Pine. 



If your readers, and 

 yourself also, good Mr. 

 Conductor, will take the 

 trouble to refer back to 

 your own pages, you will 

 find at p. 265, 266., of 

 your Third Volume, under 

 an account of the Pine- 

 tum at Dropmore. The 

 Pinus Pfnea, and Pinus 

 Cembra there set down as 

 distinct species of the same 

 genus ; one, the Pinus 

 Pinea, comes under the 

 class of Pinus foliis ge- 

 minatis; the other, Pinus C^mhra, under that of Pinus fohis quinia. 

 Yours, &c. — An Amateur. Woodstock, October 10. 1828. 



We are exceedingly obliged to An Amateur and Causidicus for the above 

 correction and information. The truth is, we gave directions for copying 

 these and other extracts from the Foreign Quarteily Review without ob- 

 serving the error, and being in France when No. XVI. was published, we 

 only saw proofs of the first two sheets, and did not see a complete copy of 

 the Number till our return to Paris in December last. No two pines are 

 more easily distinguished than the Pinea and Cembra; and while there are 

 abundance of large trees of the former in this country, those of the latter 

 are for the most part young. The Cembra is figured in Harte's Essays 

 under the name of Asphernousli. — Co7ul. 



The Anson, or Otaheite, Pine. — Sir, C. F. W., in the last Number of your 

 Magazine, page 103., asserts that the Anson, or Otaheite, Pine was intro- 

 duced into this country by the late Birt, Esq., of Colton Hall, and that 



some of the plants soon found their way from that to Shugborough, &c. 

 This is not correct; on the contrary, the more probable circumstance is, 

 that they found their way to Colton Hall from Shugborough, as there 

 exists proof that the gardener I succeeded here sent a quantity of pine 

 plants to Mr. Birt's, but none of having received any from his place. 

 Mr, Nicol (who was gardener here from 1800 to 1810) likewise informed 

 me, that the sort was in the stock when he came, under the name of the 

 Anson Pine, but he could give no further information respecting it. Mr. 

 Hodson (who was the gardener to Mr. Birt, now to the Marquess of 

 Anglesey, Beaudesert) informed me how it came to be named the Otaheite 

 Pine. He said, Mr. Birt was one day walking through the pine stoves, and 

 observing one of the plants, asked him the name of it : Mr. Hodson said 

 he did not know it, that there were not above two or three of the sort in the 

 stock. Mr. Birt observed that it very much resembled a pine they had in 

 the West Indies, under the name of the Otaheite. From that time he 

 named it the Otaheite : I had, at the same time, a large stock of them, and 

 not knowing the proper name, I adopted the one given it at Colton Hall, 

 uutil Mr. Nicol called upon me two or three years after, and corrected me 



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