Pmus 1053 



account of its edible seeds. These are known as neosa or chilghoza, and are an 

 article of food in Kunawar and other parts of the Himalayas, being largely imported 

 into the plains of India from the hills of the Punjab and Afghanistan. They are 

 oily, with a slight flavour of turpentine, and are eaten roasted at dessert by 

 Europeans. The bark is made into baskets and water buckets. 



The forests of this pine in the Shinghar and Sherghali hills, in north-eastern 

 Baluchistan, and on the adjoining Suliman range and the Maldan plateau, in the 

 North-west Frontier Province of India, have been fully described ^ by Mr. E. P. 

 Stebbing. In his account, which is accompanied by excellent illustrations of fine 

 isolated trees and of scattered woods on the arid slopes of the mountains, Mr. Stebbing 

 says that the species is here seen at its best, trees with fine straight stems 70 to 

 85 ft. high and 9 to 12 ft. in girth occurring at 7500 to 8500 ft. elevation. The 

 tree^ grows on what is apparently solid limestone rock, with the scantiest possible 

 supply of water. The tribesmen collect the cones into heaps, and extract the 

 seeds by setting fire to the mass, which causes the cone-scales to gape asunder. 

 Occasionally the tree is tapped for resin. 



It was first introduced^ into England by Lord Auckland, who sent seeds in 1839 

 to the Horticultural Society, from which plants were raised in the Chiswick Garden. 



The tree has never thriven in this country, and is the rarest of all pines in culti- 

 vation, the only specimen, exclusive of nursery plants, that we know of in England 

 being a tree, about 1 5 ft. high, in the Cambridge Botanic Garden, which is probably 

 over thirty years old. In Ireland there is also a single specimen, growing in Lord 

 Ardilaun's grounds at St. Anne's, near Dublin. It measured, in 1903, 25 ft. high 

 and I ft. 9 in. in girth, and is pyramidal in habit, with mostly ascending branches. 

 According to Mr. Campbell, the gardener at St. Anne's, it was about 5 ft. high in 

 1870. Seedlings planted out in 1908 endured the severe winter at Colesborne, with 

 a slight protection of branches, and are now growing slowly. 



This species has lived out of doors at Grafrath,^ near Munich, for nineteen years, 

 but has made little growth in height. Elwes saw a tree in the Botanic Garden at 

 Montpellier, which was about 20 ft. high in January 19 10. It had produced cones " 

 in the preceding year. \P- H-) 



1 Indian Forest Bulletin, No. 7 (1906) ; The Chilgoza Forests of Zhob and the Takht-I-Suliman, with map and 6 plates 



(Calcutta, 1906). 



2 Gordon, in Loudon, Card. Mag. xvi. 6 (1848), in giving an account of the introduction, says that all the plants culti- 

 vated previously under the name P. Gerardiana were in reality P. longifolia. Cf. also Card. Chron. 1842, p. 52. 



' Mayr, Fremdldnd. Wald- u. Parkbdume, 373 (1906). 



< Cf. Parde, in Bull. Soc. Dend. France, 1909, pp. 99, 108. 



