XXXVI. 
THE ARAUCARIA. 
Arawaria imbricata (Pavon).—This tree is a native of Chili. 
On the Cordilleras in that country, it is found at various 
altitudes, and in some instances it approaches not far from 
the line of perpetual snow. It has been known in this 
country since the end of last century. In 1795, Captain 
Vancouver touched at the coast of Chili, and Mr. Menzies, who 
accompanied the expedition, procured cones, seeds from which he 
sowed on board ship, and brought home living plants, which 
he presented to Sir Joseph Banks, who planted one of them in 
his own garden at Spring Grove, and sent the others to Kew. 
From this circumstance the tree was called at first, in England, 
Sir Joseph Banks’s Pine. The tree is dicecious, and the male 
is said to attain in its native country to only a small size 
compared to the female, which reaches to 150 feet in height. 
Dr. Peeppig, in The Companion to the Botanic Magazine, gives 
a detailed account of the araucaria forests. He says,—‘ The 
araucaria is the palm of those Indians who inhabit the Chilian 
Andes, from latitude 37° to 48°, yielding to these nomade 
nations a vegetable substance that is found in the greater 
plenty the more they recede from the whites, and the more 
difficult they find it to obtain corn by commerce. Such is the 
extent of the araucarian forests (pinares), and the amazing 
quantity of nutritious seeds that each full-grown tree produces, 
that the Indians are ever secure from want; and even the 
discord that prevails frequently among the different hordes 
does not prevent the quiet collection of this kind of harvest. 
A single fruit (cabeza, a head) contains between 200 and 300 
kernels, and there are frequently twenty or thirty fruits on one 
