122 PINACEiE. 



PiNUS OoCARPA: The Egg-sliaped-Coned Pine. 



This kind is found hoth in India and Mexico, attaining heights of 

 from thirty to fifty feet. Leaves, generally five in a sheath, from five 

 to seven inches long; smooth and slender, pendulous, angular, and 

 sharp-pointed, and bright green in colour. Cones, as its name implies, 

 egg-shaped ; from three to foiir inches long, and from two to three 

 inches broad at the swell, which is near the base ; hard, glossy, and 

 shining, and of a yellowish colour when ripe. Forming a pendulous - 

 branched and spreading-headed Pine. Much too tender and delicate 

 for the climate of Britain. There is also a small-coned form of it. 



PiNUS Patula : The Spreading Pine. 



Introduced from Mexico about a quarter of a century ago. A very 

 peculiar and highly interesting Pine ; in a young state as like a green 

 fountain as a green Pine. Leaves, in threes, fours, or fives, in a 

 sheath ; from six to ten inches long ; slender, soft, spreading, recurved, 

 channelled above, convex below ; and rich light green in colour. 

 Cones, from three to five inches long, and from one to two inches 

 broad, somewhat incurved, and of a pale brown colour. In any 

 pinetum or arboretum where a good loam, sweet, moist, or sandy soil, 

 where warmth and shelter can be afforded it, and where sun and air 

 abound, there should it have a place in this country. There are 

 Macrocarpa (large-coned), and Stricta (erect-growing), varieties of it. 



PiNUS PeuCE : — " We have received from Messrs. Haage and 

 Schmidt, of Erfurt, fine specimens of this rare Fir, wliich is nearly 

 related to Strobus, and by no means to Cemhra. It is the ■kevkt} of the 

 Greeks, and grows wild in Macedonia, on the sides of Mount Peristeri, 

 on granite soils, at an elevation of two thousand yards ; at which 

 heights, however, it becomes a scrubby, knarled tree. Gordon's account 

 of it is a miserable mess of blunders." Vide Gardener''s Chronicle, 

 page 128, voL 1864. 



Mr. Gordon's " mess of blimders," however, is more of a singularity 

 than a plurality, inasmuch as he says nothing about Pinus Pence in the 

 " Pinetum," for he merely places the name under Pinus Cembra 

 Pygmcea ; and such a blunder is much less injurious to the best 

 interests of true science in relation to the cultural arts, or the 

 advancement of ti'ue knowledge in this utilitarian age, than this un- 

 common-sense about this "rare pine." It is most distressing to behold the 

 very monarchs of scholarship and botanical science, in this, the latter 

 half of the nineteenth century, so persistently persisting in their pedantic 



