PREFACE 



TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



The more frequent inLercourse with foreign parts, and eonsequcntly the greater facilities which scienllfie 

 travellers find in visiting the remoter regions of the earth, have tended infinitely to enlarge our views in every 

 Itranch of Natural History, not only hy the vast increase of new species, but by the accession of a rich fund 

 of interesting facts and observations. This new edition of my work on the Coniferw, which I have long con- 

 templated, will he found to comprise, l)esides all the species contained in the two former volumes, plates and 

 descriptions of many new and highly interesting subjects, which, either from want of sufficient materials, were 

 not included in the second volume, published in 1824, or have been discovered since its publication. Through 

 the kindness of my excellent friend. Dr. Martius, who has devoted five years to investigating the Botany of the 

 Brazils, at the expense of His Majesty, the late King of Bavaria, I have been enabled to give the portrait of a 

 tree of the Araucaria Brasiliana, and likewise of a full-grown cone of the same species. The materials 

 received since the publication of the second volume, from the late celebrated traveller, Mr. Moorcroft, whose 

 premature and unfortunate fate science has cause to deplore, have afl'orded me an opportunity of adding much 

 both to the plate and description of the Piims Deodara, which, as a timber tree, is now found to be invaluahle. 

 A plate of the Taxodium sempervirens , and of the curious Thuja dolohrata of Thunberg, form part of the ad- 

 ilitlons lo the present edition. A specimen with cones of the Pimts Orientalisy collected near Teflis^ and presented 

 to me by Sir Gore Ouseleyj has enabled me to complete the plate, and to speak more decidedly to the specific 

 distinctions of this interesting, and but little known specieS;, than I Avas justified in doing in my former work. 

 I have very recently received specimens of a Pine collected in the vicinity of Montevideo hy my distinguished 

 friend^ Captain Phillip Parker King, R. N. who is now engaged on an expedition of survey on the coasts of 

 South America. The tree was reported to Captain King to have lieen raised from seeds received from 

 Teneriffe, but as it h^s Jv/iis gcminis^ and is otherwise quite unlike the Piniis Canarie^isis, I am inclined to 

 tliink that it may have- originally been imported by seed from China, and as it approacli^s very near to 

 Pimis Massojiiana, it may possibly prove lo be the same species; but cones of both are still wanting to 

 establish this point. While this work was nearly throngh the press, 1 received intelHgence from my friend, 

 Mr. Sabine, the distinguislied Secretary of the Horticultural Society, of a most remarkable Pine of ex- 

 traordinary dimensions, and bearing large cones, with edible nuts, discovered in Cahfornia by the Society's 

 ]>otanical collector, Mr. David Douglas, who has just returned from an expedition to the north-west coast of 

 America, where he has been for three years. A description of this remarkable tree will appear in the 

 forthcoming part of the '^Transactions of the Linnean Society;" and, as Mr. Douglas has brought home 

 abundance of materials, I hope, through the kindness of Mr. Sabine, who is ever alive to the interests of 

 science, to give shortly a plate of it. Mr, Douglas has done me the honour to name it Pinm Lamhertimia. 

 The trunk of the largest wJiich Mr. Douglas measured was 215 feet high, perfectly straight, with a diameter 

 of 19 feet, and the cones ]6 inches long, and 9 in circumference ; but the general dimensions of the trees are 

 150 feet in elevation, and from 8 to 14 feet in diameter,^ The perusal of the valuable Memoir on the Genera 

 of the Coniferoj^ by that learned botanist, the late Mons, Richard, and recently published by his son, has led 

 Mr. Don to re-examine the Dammara AiistraUs and OricntaUs^ as well as Taxodiimi sempervirens^ and thereby 

 to correct some important errors into which he had fallen in his descriptions of them. 



" Liau. Trans. voL 15, p. 408. 



