CHRISTMAS TREES 309 



we have the Indian cedar or deodar, and the Weymouth 

 pine, Pinus Strobus, a North American tree. Still later a 

 veritable crowd of American, Himalayan, Japanese, and 

 Chinese pine trees of one kind and another have been 

 introduced by dealers and their.rich clients, the owners 

 of park plantations, so that it is now far easier to see 

 in the grounds around great English houses all sorts of 

 pine trees from remote regions of the earth than the 

 British species, or those interesting European kinds which 

 have some kind of community with them, and are, at 

 any rate, objects of interest to the naturalist whose 

 familiar ground is that of Europe. Most people are 

 utterly perplexed by the number of kinds, and do not 

 know one from another. 



In order to discuss a little further in detail the 

 commoner kinds of Coniferae besides those which may be 

 considered as truly British, and have been mentioned 

 above, we must take a glance at the plants related to 

 the natural order Coniferae, and then at the divisions of '^ 

 that natural order into families and tribes. The Coniferae 

 are an order of the great class of Gymnosperms — one of 

 two classes into which the flowering plants or Phanero- 

 gams are divided, the other being (as explained above) the 

 Angiosperms (palms, grasses, lilies, and all our ordinary 

 trees, shrubs, and flower-bearing herbs). The orders 

 included under " Gymnosperms " are : First, an order, the 

 Pterido-spermia, comprising certain remarkable fossil forms 

 connecting them with ferns ; second, the order Cycadeae, 

 an ancient group, of which only a dozen or so kinds 

 survive to this day ; third, the order Gnetaceae, including 

 Wellwitch's strange African plant and the little European 

 Ephedras, resembling the plants called horse-tails ; 

 fourth, the order of the Gingko trees of Japan, called 

 also Salisburiae, with leaves like those of the maiden's- 



