232 ARAUCARINES 
CUNNINGHAMIA SINENSIS or LANCEOLATA 
(OF THE TRIBE ARAUCARINE&) 
' The flora of the mystic mine world 
Around me lifts on crystal stems 
The petals of its clustered gems. 
WHITTIER, 
The Cunninghamia by its appearance—and these 
appearances, upon a further investigation among 
the written-up pages of its past, do not belie the 
impression—seems to betray evidences that it has 
been unearthed from some ‘‘ mystic mine world,” 
and forthwith bidden again from there to take up 
its place again upon a more modern earth. 
It is one of those trees that lends an idea that at 
one time it had been a tenant of prehistoric swamps, 
and a near neighbour of snakes, mosquitoes, and 
swimming fowls; or that it dated back from those 
qualis ab incepto times that we are told of, when all 
the world, physical and animal, was either young, 
very young, or unarrived. As it has been credibly 
ascertained and scientifically reported that it repre- 
sents one of the oldest types of vegetation existent, 
all such impressions are satisfactorily endorsed, and 
therefore need not be apologized for. 
In taking up a rightful place among the genera 
of a modern botanical world, it has had its vicissitudes. 
Those who pull the ropes make the bells ring, and 
those who rule in the botanical world call the tune. 
Finally, it may be said to have been consigned by 
them to the care of the Araucarinez, but not before 
it had been tossed to and fro like a nobody’s child, 
among tree tribes descript and tree tribes nondescript. 
We ought, in fairness to its career, whether it ag- 
grandizes it or not in the eyes of the world, to add 
