Araucaria Imhricata. 27 



and meagre root fibre, impaired health must 

 be expected, and the probable manifestation 

 of it will be the " stag-horn top." On the 

 Bagshot beds, which to a Hmited extent 

 overlie the London clay in Middlesex, we find 

 the fine brown sands with thin layers of clay 

 and gravel and an impervious yellow and 

 bluish clay subsoil. It is usually wet and 

 boggy on account of the free percolation of 

 water through the upper soil and its retention 

 below. Here the disease is most rampant, 

 for the trees suffer from excessive wet in the 

 winter months and from surface dryness in 

 the summer. 



It may be said that all our deciduous trees 

 are subject to this disease when enfeeblement 

 arises, but, although the conifers suffer too 

 under like circumstances, I have always found 

 a reverse effect ; that is, they, instead of 

 dying from the top, die from the bottom. I 

 had occasion some time ago to hold a post- 

 mortem upon an Araucaria imhricata, the 

 Chih pine, planted in 1851 to commemorate 

 the great exhibition of that year. A section 

 of this tree is now on view in the Herbarium 



