FITZEOYA PATAGONICA. 269 



be only a confused scrubby bush, over which a man can step. 

 On the larger trees, the branches are stout and spreading, with 

 their extremities ascending ; the branchlets alternate distichous, 

 four-angled, and clothed with leaves broadly decurrent and adnate 

 at the base, pointed and free at the apex, and of a bright grass- 

 green colour. 



Habitat. — Valdivia, in southern Chili, the island of Chiloe,* and 

 the Andes of Patagonia, as far as the Straits of Magellan. f 



Introduced by us in 1849, through William Lobb. 



Liboeedrus tetragona is the Alerze of the Chilians, by whom it is 

 justly valued as one of the most important timber trees of their 

 country. The wood is almost indestructible by the weather, boards 

 and shingle that have been exposed for upwards of one hundred 

 years being worn quite thin but remaining perfectly sound. It is 

 reddish in colour, soft, easy to work, and useful for every description of 

 carpentry. Alerze timber is exported in considerable quantities from 

 Valdivia and Chiloe to the various ports along the Pacific coast of 

 South America. From the thready inner bark is obtained a kind of 

 tow, imperishable in water, which is much used by the sea-faring 

 people of Chiloe and the adjacent coast, for making the joints of their 

 skiffs and small craft water-tight. % L. tdragona has, up to the present 

 time, generally failed in England, and has now become 'quite rare. 



VII — FITZROYA (Sir J. D. HooherJ. The Patagonian Cypeess. 



Fitzroya is a sub-antarctic Conifer, taking the form of a large 

 tree or low shrub according to the situation in which it is grow- 

 ing, and having the following among its most obvious characters : — 

 The branchlets are flexible and sub-pendulous, the leaves in 

 whorls of fours, but sometimes in threes and twos, decurrent, 

 " keeled beneath and on each side, the keel or midrib 

 having a pale glaucous depressed line." The flowers are 

 dioecious, and produced at the extremities of the branchlets, 

 and the cones are composed of small scales, two or three 

 only of which are fertile, each producing two or three seeds. 



By Sir W. Hooker, Fitzroya was considered to be nearest allied to 

 the Japanese Thuiopsis, but Parlatore places it next to Diselma, a 



* Claudio Gay, Eistoria del Chile, v., p. 408. t Prod., xvi., p. 455. 



% De la corteza filamentoza se obtiene una estopa ineomiptibile dentro del agua, y que la 

 gente del pais utiliza con mueha ventaja para tapar las junturas de sus Piraguas. C. Gay, v., 

 p. 408. 



