INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 31 



The varieties that may be selected from a plantation of seed- 

 ling SprucBj Larch, or Yew plants are innumerable ; but so led 

 away are observers by dominant ideas as to the form and 

 habit that plants should assume, that similar diflferences in 

 other species are seldom put down to a similar power of vary- 

 ing, as a priori they should be, but are taken as evidence of 

 specific difference. To this proneness to attach undue im- 

 portance to variation, we owe the separation of Pinus Pin- 

 drow from Webbiana, P. Khutrow or P. Morinda from P. 

 Smithiana ; nor is this all, for species have been made of the 

 commonest English plants which grow in the Himalaya, be- 

 cause they present differences of habit when compared with 

 English individuals, but which plants, if compared with con- 

 tinental specimens of the same species, are found to be iden- 

 tical with them : to such an extent has this been carried, that 

 of the several hundred European plants found in India, there 

 is hardly a species that has not had one (and many, more) 

 new names given to it. 



The differences in the properties of plants and in the colour 

 and durability, etc. of woods, demand a short notice, because 

 the idea is too prevalent that these are very unvarying dia- 

 gnostic properties of species. That some woods are always 

 good, and some as constantly worthless, is incontestable ; but 

 this applies chiefly to those of very remarkable hardness or 

 density or weight, or other very unusually marked quality; 

 and even of these, the Teak, Sissoo, Sal, etc., each vary much 

 in quality, whilst the wood of other kinds is singularly va- 

 riable, as of the Indian Pines, Oaks, Laurels, Ebonies, etc. 

 With regard to the Pines, this is very much to be attributed 

 to the soil and climate, and consequent rapidity of growth 



are so sportive in the Deodar, that we have seen many specimens of it that are 

 as imHte what we call the typical Deodar, as they are unlike the Cedar ; and 

 others that approach the latter very closely. There are very slight dififerences 

 in the shape of the cone-scales of the Deodar, Cedar, and Algeriae Cedar, which 

 have never been indicated, and may be of value : but we doubt their proving so, 

 from the fact of the Algerme Cedar, in this respect, approaching the Himalayan, 

 and thus uniting all three. 



