president's address. 171 



bottoms of the whin coverts, which would otherwise become 

 open and pervious to cold winds. 



The great economic value of TJlex in countries of Celtic popula- 

 tion and small farming, like "Wales and Ireland, is sufficiently 

 clear to all who know the habits of the people, the methods 

 used to bruise the green fodder for horses and cattle, the cheap- 

 ness and efficiency and extensive use of whin fences, the im- 

 portance of the domestic fuel so abundantly and readily supplied. 

 The very name of the plant, ivhin, familiar to us all in the north, 

 is purely British or Welsh ; nor does it anywhere flower more 

 splendidly in May than in these northern counties. 



About the year 1847, some seed, from Nepaul or from Cash- 

 mere, of the Himalayan Spruce Fir, known best by the title of 

 Abies Morinda or Abies Smithiana, was sown in our garden. 

 Plants were already, indeed, common enough in the principal 

 nursery establishments ; but as they were not always seedlings, 

 but raised from cuttings, this seed was valuable, as fresh and 

 genuine seed from natural habitats always is. 



Abies Morinda is a very beautiful tree, which is conspicuously 

 distinguished from the European Abies excelsa by the spinelet 

 leaves being more elongated towards, and at, the extremity of 

 each shoot, than along the sides of the same. A shoot of Abies 

 excelsa compared with one of the European excelsa has also its 

 spinelets or needlets, generally, perhaps twice the length of 

 those of Europoea, besides the increased elongation towards the 

 extremity. The differential form of tail in the British and 

 European wild cat as compared with that in the domestic cat is 

 curiously parallel. That of the wild cat becomes thicker and 

 has longer hairs near the end, whilst the domestic animal, and 

 the Egyptian original from which it is believed to be descended, 

 has a tapering tail, as our Abies excelsa has tapering shoots. 



The Morinda spruce has shown itself ill-qualified to bear the 

 low mean temperature of Britain to the northward of the Trent, 

 except in a few favoured localities, mostly near the western 

 coast. It is either disfigured by the effects of frost, or its 

 growth is soon brought nearly to a stand. But seven or eight 

 of our best plants, which were very beautiful and well-marked, 



