CONIFERS. 



95 



somewliat striated with yellowish-ruby veins or bands ; but for general 

 utility it is rather too heavy. In its annual growths it generally pro- 

 duces its terminal or leading shoots in alternate years, and the same in 

 its laterals or side shoots, each series of growths being in alternate 

 seasons, which gives the branches and branchlets of this tree their 

 regular and uniform disposition on the tree ; and the branches being 

 arranged in verticillate whorls, with their stems horizontal and their 

 tips ascending, their laterals long, somewhat slender, regularly divided, 

 and generally in opposite pairs, their branchlets undivided, cylindrical, 

 and well covered with the gorgeous green foliage ; all this gives us a 

 perfect model of an open-branched, fine-foliaged, and symmetrically 

 beautiful pine. Ornament is its use, however, for its wood would not 

 prove to be profitable in this country ; and any collection of orna- 

 mental trees, great or small, where one or more specimens of this tree 

 is not found cannot be worthy the name of a fine collection of trees ; for 

 this is indeed one of the very finest and most ornamental trees in the 

 vegetable kingdom. It is to be found in several forms or varieties, 

 particularly when in a young state ; but the only constant or truly 

 distinct varieties of it I have yet seen are the Femina, female, and 

 Mascula, male ; and its Variegata- or variegated variety, — a most super- 

 latively beautiful plant. 



ArauGARIA Rulei : Eules' Araucaria. 



This kind has but recently been discovered in Australia, and is at 

 best but a quasi-species of the Chilian or prototype Imhricaia^ to which 

 it is more closely related than to either of its congeners Bid well's and 

 the Brazil Araucaria, but a much smaller-sized tree than any of them, 

 attaining heights of from forty to fifty feet, with its branches extend- 

 ing from twenty to twenty-five feet in diameter. 



It may be summarized as a small-sized, numerous-branched, dense- 

 formed variety of the Chilian Pine. Being, as it is, thoroughly tender, 

 it is of no economic value in this country, neither for profitable nor 

 ornamental planting. 



§ 2. Dammara : The Indian Wax Pine. 



Dammar, or Dammar-puti, or Dammar-hatu are the names applied 



to this pine by the native Malays ; which may be from the Sanscrit ^T, 



Da; or, Deva; and '^'^^ Aiirra, or ^T"^? Ahmra, from its 



being esteemed as a " Sacred Tree " by the Ambonians ; or it may be 

 from Damma,'' an ancient town of Serica; and Amra,'' a tree, a 



