XXI. 
THE LARCH. 
Tor Larou.—Lariz Europea (Dec.)—This is the only 
genus of the natural order Conifers, or cone-bearing tribe, 
that is composed of deciduous trees. 
This, the common species, is a native of the Alps of France 
and Switzerland, and of the Apennines in Italy. It is also 
indigenous on all the elevated and rocky situations in the 
Tyrol, and on other mountains in Germany. 
It appears that the tree was introduced into England during 
the early part of the seventeenth century. In 1596, Gerard, 
a physician in London, published a catalogue enumerating 
upwards of a thousand sorts of plants of foreign and domestic 
growth, in which he gives an accurate description of the tree. 
But the first account we have of its being introduced into 
England is given by Parkinson, an apothecary in London, 
who wrote in 1629. In his Paradisus he notices the larch 
to be “a rare tree, and nursed up with but few, and those 
only lovers of variety.” Evelyn, in 1664, mentions a larch, a 
flourishing and ample tree, growing at Chelmsford in Essex. 
Miller, in the first number of his Gardener's Dictionary, pub- 
lished in 1731, states that the tree was common in English 
gardens, and that some large trees at Wimbledon produced 
annually a great number of cones. Miller again, in the 
seventh edition of the Dictionary, published in 1759, states 
that the larch had become plentiful and common in most of 
the English nurseries, and that of late years great numbers 
of the tree have been planted, adding, that “those which had 
been planted in the worst soil and situations had thriven 
best.” From this period the nature of the tree became better 
