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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



stages of their existence. A few of the rarer species, like the alpine and 

 glacier Pinks, are more difficult to manage, and require special attention 

 in order to grow them successfully and get them to flower freely. Some 

 of the smaller ones, again, suffer very much from damp in winter, and 

 fine plants which have taken years to reach a respectable size are often 

 lost in this way. Seed is the easiest method by which a stock of plants 

 may be obtained, but, owing to the facility with which the various kinds 

 hybridise, they are not to be relied on to come true, except in a few cases 

 and where the plant to be increased in that way is isolated from all 

 others. Cuttings taken j ust after the plants have done flowering root 

 readily inserted in small pots in a mixture of loam and plenty of sand. 

 The pots should be plunged in a shady frame and kept close for a time 

 until the cuttings are rooted, when they may be potted off singly. 

 Division of the plants in the spring may also be effected with many of 

 the smaller tufted species. — E. T. C. 



Pinus Cone, A Proliferous. By Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer (Ann. Bot. 

 vol. xvii. No. 68, p. 779 ; with plate xl.) . — We are informed by the author 

 that he has failed to find any record of terminal proliferation in a Pinus 

 cone, and that Dr. Masters, F.R.S., who is the accepted authority on the 

 ConifercB, knows of none. In Larix, he says, proliferation of the female 

 cones is not uncommon, but the passage from cone to shoot is not, as in 

 the present case, abrupt, but gradual. " The specimen described in this 

 note has perhaps a little more than a scientific interest. It was brought 

 from Spain by the late H.R.H. the Comte de Paris in 1894, and sent by 

 him to me not many months before his death, which took place on 

 September 8 of that year." Its history is given in letters from the Comte 

 de Paris, here printed. " It was picked up in a large Pinar or Pine forest 

 which I own in this neighbourhood, by one of my keepers, a day I was out 

 shooting. The young tree was then about six inches long. ... I took 

 the cone home and left it alone on a table, about the middle of February. 

 It went on growing for a month, made a stem more than a foot long with 

 three branches, and even threw out new shoots. About the end of March, 

 although it was watered, it ceased to grow and died, although the needles 

 did not fall and preserved colour." The author gives the total length of 

 the specimen as 1 9h inches. " The cones belong to the * Stone 

 Pine' (Pinus Pinea L.). As is well known, the seeds are edible; 

 hence the Comte de Paris writes of them as Almonds ; strung together 

 they are sold in the market at Lisbon. Examples may be seen in the 

 Kew Museum, where the specimen is also preserved. Normal cones of 

 Pinus Pinea are usually about six inches long. That now described is 

 only 8^ inches. It is therefore a small cone. But as the apex of the 

 largest scales measures an inch across — which is the normal size — the 

 smallness of the cone is due to its having fewer scales and not to its being 

 immature. The morphological interpretation of the female cone in the 

 AbieHnea is a subject upon which the most divergent views have been 

 held. As is well known, a cone is composed of seminiferous scales (which 

 become greatly enlarged in Pinus), and these are apparently axillary 

 structures subtended by the primary reduced leaves of the axis of the cone, 

 the so-called bract-scales. In Larix proliferation of the female cones is not 



