GYMNOSPERM^. 



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supplying the largest proportion of useful timber, the importations of Coniferous wood 

 into this country alone being of the value of £9,000,000 per annum. In India the 

 Deodar takes the place of the Pine, and in the Southern Hemisphere the timbers of 

 Araucarias and Dammaras are employed to a relatively equal extent. Many of the v^oods 

 possess an intrinsic value for the manufacture of furniture, musical instruments, &c., 

 tables made of the mottled butt-wood of the North-African Callitris having, according to 

 Pliny, fetched £9000 or £10,000 each. The seeds of many Coniferse are eaten or used for 

 various purposes ; and the annual importation of Coniferous tars and resins into England 

 falls little short of £1,000,000 in value. 



Tribe I.— CUPRESSINEiE. 



These are large, very resinous trees or shrubs, with small scale-like leaves, and small 

 globular cones, composed of from four to eight, or rarely ten, peltate, persistent scales, 

 except in the Juniper, where they coalesce into a fleshy berry called a galhulm, witli 

 numerous small, compressed, frequently triangulated seeds, usually provided with 

 membranous wings at the angles. Both fruit and foliage, from their resinous nature, 

 appear exceptionally capable of resisting decay in water. Thirteen genera and 111 

 ■species are described in Gordon's ' Pinetum ' (1880), but Bentham and Hooker have 

 since reduced the genera to seven, with twelve subgenera or sections, and seventy-five 

 species. These range from Australia, through India and South America, to the Arctic 

 regions ; and while many are fitted to thrive in the subtropics, others, as species of 

 Juniper and Cypress, are among the hardiest shrubs in existence. 



Their origin can be traced back to the Permian if Ullmcamia be really Cupressineous ; 

 and they became during the Jurassic and Wealden a preponderating tribe. Some of the 

 forms are of interest, among them being Widdringtonia, Ecldnostrohus, Tliuyites, and 

 TImyopsis, but all are more or less imperfectly known, and the abundance of the tribe is 

 chiefly inferred from the prevalence of wood called Cupressinoxylon. 



In the Cretaceous deposits a number of very anomalous forms are met with, com- 

 bining the imbricated foliage of the Cupressineae with characters no longer met with 

 in the tribe. A remarkable form from Aix-la-Chapelle combines a Libocedrus-Y^o, 

 foliage^ with a cone resembling that of Sequoia (jigantea, but under each scale are a 

 number of Cupressineous seeds. In the Komeschichtcn of Greenland an important 

 genus, Inolepis of Heer, combining imbricated foliage with small oval cones, composed 

 of some forty leathery, dorsally-carinated, scales, seems more nearly allied to the 

 Tawodiece. An equally abnormal Cretaceous genus is Cyparissidium, which also 

 possesses imbricated slender foliage and small ovate cones, composed of eighteen to 

 ^ Dr. De Bey supposes the foliage to be dimorphic. 



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