24 PINES 
There is another glaring anomaly in their system, 
so far as ternate (three leaves in a bundle) Pines are 
concerned, and that has reference to the deciduous 
habits of their basal sheaths. 
In the case of the Bungeana, it falls away the first 
year. In the case of the P. Gerardiana it remains 
until the second year, and then disappears, a pro- 
ceeding which is also another novelty in all Pine 
tradition. Though these sort of departures from 
the true paths of strict orthodoxy are only ques- 
tions at most of disconcerting interest to the advanced 
botanist, they ought to be seized upon as tokens of 
serviceable help to identification by the less-advanced 
student. They are some of those little apparitional 
differences that should be of subtle assistance to the 
dilettante, and are well worth looking out for when 
he comes across an unfamiliar-looking three-leaved 
Pine. 
It is for these two habits, peculiar to themselves, 
among the three-leaved lot, this shedding of bark 
and basal sheath, that these two Pines have been 
handcuffed together in amicable bondage, and formed 
into a little duumvirate of partnership, in a group 
of their own. , 
‘P. BunGEANa.—The branchlets of the Bungeana 
at Kew are of a greyish green, and the several can- 
delabra-formed stems (of one of the two trees) are of 
an ashen-grey colour. This appearance may be 
mainly an effect due to.a life spent in a begrimed 
atmosphere, and traceable to those same artificial 
causes that are so apt to temporarily deface a chimney 
sweep’s weekday countenance. As the tree appears 
there, it certainly looks to the unsophisticated visitor 
more like a bit of beechwood that has done time in 
a colliery pit, and lost the glamour of its pristine 
shine, than a specimen of plant life that some day 
