CONIFEEJE. 



119 



Europe ; and, no doubt, has been introduced into China, France, Great 

 Britain, Japan, ISTepal, 'New Zealand, North and South America, St. 

 Helena, and many other parts of the globe where it is now to be found 

 more or less plentiful in a cultivated state, and not unfrequently in an 

 apparently naturalized condition. This Massoniana, then, is from 

 China, where John Chinaman, the knowing one in the arts of Pine 

 culture, cuts and clips it into every conceivable shape or form, where 

 he trains the branches into fan-forms, or fiat China-plate-like shapes, 

 and at times plants it under favourable conditions, and in suitable soils 

 and situations, where it of course becomes a stately Pine : or, again, 

 in a miniature China flower pot, rustic, or lacquered box, where it is 

 starved and reduced to a perfect pigmy, or the smallest shrub we 

 can possibly imagine. 



'Need, we wonder then, when our botanical instructors inform us 

 that Massoniaim is a new species, and that — Its cones and leaves are 

 very different from, and much smaller than. Pinaster f No, for so 

 say I, when the " Star," or any other Pine produces its cones or 

 leaves in a thumb-pot, where depapurated, they, before being starved to 

 death, make their dying efforts to perpetuate themselves by producing 

 a batch of small cones ; for, common sense asks — how could such 

 plants produce large ones ? 



These Orientals are also great experts in the artful modes of budding, 

 grafting, and inarching Pines, which modes the Chinese term " Sessiho,'^ 

 and the Japanese " Iswgiki,'^ and not unfrequently, in their flowery 

 lands and sunny climes, several species or varieties of the pines are to 

 be found upon a common species as a stock, presenting to the eye of 

 the inexperienced the most grotesque forms it is possible to conceive. 



Now after knowing that the Orientals resort to such artifices in the 

 cultivation of their Firs and Pines, we have but little cause for wonder 

 at the many kinds they are said to possess ; for even of this so-called 

 Massoniana the following list of sorts can be supplied to any liberal 

 foreigner who may visit them, with his purse well replenished and his 

 hobby " neio Pines — Aka-matsu (red Pine), Fama-matsu (elegant 

 Pine), Fltots-matsu (single-leaved Pine), Fon-matsu (true Pine), 

 He-matsu (female Pine), Kier-matsu (large Pine), Ko-matsu (small 

 Pine), Kok-sung-matsu (common black Pine), Siruga-matsu (varie- 

 gated Pine), Wo-matsu (male Pine), and Wumi-matsu (sea coast 

 Pine), ad rniinitum. 



In the qMdi^i- Massoniana. and the prototype Pinaster there is a differ- 

 ence, and not unfrequently a plurality of distinctions ; but that natural 



