PARK AND CEMETERY. 
256 
seventy-five or eighty feet high at the 
tips of the branches, it means consid- 
erable expense and competent labor to 
get at them. These large trees are the 
kind that this department has had to 
deal with. 
For this work the property owner is 
charged for the actual expenditure of 
labor and in no case can the assess- 
ment exceed one-half of one per cent 
of the assessed value of the property. 
This makes the burden very light for 
the work could not be done by the 
householders at anything near the price 
they are charged. In cases where peo- 
ple insist on doing the work them- 
selves they are allowed to do so pro- 
vided they notify the department after 
the work is done so that it may be re- 
inspected. In large estates the cost 
There are few families of trees of 
which a perfect knowledge has been 
more backward, and harder to at- 
tain, than the Conifers. The oldest 
writers studied them and attempted 
to describe the particular kinds which 
came under their investigations, but 
it is singular that on the whole, al- 
though clear-sighted on other plants, 
the neglected Conifers. 
Linnaeus, in 1753, described twenty- 
five ‘varieties, which he sorted into 
five species. Pinus comprised at the 
time the Pinus, Cedrus, Larix, Abies, 
Picea and Tsuga. He gave to Abies 
pectinata the name of Pinus picea and 
to Picea exselsa that of Pinus abies. 
This error, revived later by Loudon 
in his Arboretum et Fruiticetum Bri- 
tannicum, was the cause of the con- 
fusion which lasted for a long time 
between the Abies and the Picea, and 
which still persists, at least in horti- 
cultural nomenclature; most nursery- 
men include the two under the name 
of Abies. 
L. C. Richard was the first botanist 
to scientifically study the Conifers. 
He established in his “Memoir on the 
Conifers,” which appeared in 1826, the 
first basis for their systematic classifi- 
cation; nevertheless he retained for 
the genus Pinus its Linnsean sense, 
although substituting the name of 
Abies. 
It was Link who in 1841, assigned 
to the Pinus, Cedrus, Larix, Abies and 
Picea the generic value which has 
since been recognized, although it 
was not at first accepted by all bo- 
tanical writers. 
As early as 1836 Lindley proposed 
to raise the Taxaceae to the rank of a 
distinct family, but his opinion was 
falls very heavily on the department. 
Before anything is done towards en- 
tering private property, an inspection is 
made and if pests are found a notice is 
served on the owner, informing him of 
the fact and demanding that he remove 
the pests within a certain time. If this 
is not done the city force later enters 
and does the work that he neglected to 
do charging, as said above, the actual 
cost to him. 
While this work of extermination 
must be continued to make the infested 
districts bearable, still the great hope 
is centered in the fine work that is 
being done by Mr. Kirkland's depart- 
ment, in producing parasites that when 
produced in sufficient numbers will 
regulate the matter of these pests with- 
out man’s assistance. 
not shared at the outset in spite of 
the important differences existing be- 
tween them and the true conifers. In 
1842 Spach separated the Chamaecy- 
paris from the Cupressus. 
The Synopsis Coniferarum of S. 
Endlicher, published in 1847, showed 
great progress in botanical knowledge 
of the evergreens. This author still 
retain for the Abretinse the genus 
Pinus with its Linnaean modification, 
but he divided it into sections. He 
separated the Sequoia sempervirens 
from the Taxodium; he also estab- 
lished the genera Libocedrus and 
Widdringtonia and detached the Tsu- 
ga from the Picea. 
In turn Carriere, then chief nurs- 
eryman of the museum, undertook the 
systematic study of the conifers as 
laid down by Endlicher whom he fol- 
lowed in other respects in his “Gen- 
eral Treatise on the Conifers,” pub- 
lished in 1855. In the second edition, 
issued in 1867, he reaffirmed the five 
genera before mentioned, adopted the 
genus Pseudolarix of Gordon, and 
created the genera Pseudotsuga and 
Keteleeria. One must read his de- 
scriptions and above all his critical 
notes, to appreciate the efforts made 
by this sagacious writer to unravel 
the nomenclature and the affinities of 
the genera and species, and to reduce 
them from chaos. Hi’s book was a 
great success and established .him as 
an authority on the conifers. 
In 1868, Parlatore published an au- 
thoritative Monograph on the Coni- 
fers in the Prodromus of de Candolle. 
In the Genera Plantarum of Bentham 
and Hooker, brought out in 1883, 
Bentham set up a new arrangement 
of genera, more natural than that of 
his predecessors; however certain 
modifications, notably the reunion of 
the Thuyopsis, Biota and Chamaecy- 
paris to the Thuya, and the Cephalo- 
taxus to the Sequoia, have not been 
generally adopted. 
Finally, Dr, Masters,, the eminent 
editor of the “Gardeners’ Chronicle,” 
has published many important mem- 
oirs and numerous articles which have 
tended to develop knowledge of the 
conifers to its limit. The Congress 
of the Conifers, held in London in 
1892, gave him the opportunity to pre- 
sent a methodic and synonymic list 
of the conifers under cultivation, the 
most perfect ever elaborated up to 
date. It is this list which I have fol- 
lowed in my Elementary Treatise on 
the Conifers and Taxaceae, published 
in 1902, with this one exception, that 
I believe the genus Chamaecyparis 
should be reestablished. Previous to 
my book there appeared in Germany, 
in 1891, the Handbuch der Nadelholz- 
Runde by Beissner, and in England in 
1900 the second edition of Veitch’s 
Manual of the Coniferae, edited by 
Kent. These two important general 
works, while differing by a divergence 
of views concering the classification 
of the genera, are remarkably rich in 
make-up and contain numerous and 
complete descriptions. 
Such is the literature of the coni- 
fers and the incident,= which have de- 
veloped their nomenclature and botan- 
ical classification. They excuse in 
large measure the imperfections of 
the horticultural catalogues; neither 
nurserymen nor amateurs can follow 
from day to day the modifications 
proposed by the botanists, and one 
would wish that horticultural usage 
might be put in accord with the codi- 
fication now established with suffi- 
cient accuracy. Why, indeed, con- 
tinue to designate a tree by a name 
which is shown to imply a false idea? 
The arboriculturists do not admit 
that pears and apples can be classed 
together, nor that peaches, cherries, 
apricots and almonds belong to the 
plums, as the botanists do for want 
of valid characteristics upon which to 
found a generic distinction. With 
greater reason should they not persist 
in maintaining in one genus the Abies 
and Picea, between which there are 
far greater differences than between 
the above mentioned trees, rather 
than to separate generically the Reti- 
nospora from the Chamaecyparis, of 
which they are only the youthful 
form, or the Podocarpus koraiensis, 
which is only a fastigiate form of the 
Cephalotaxus pedunculata. 
S. Mottet, in “Revue Horticole.” 
NOMENCLATURE OF CONIFERS 
