164 
THE ESSEX NATURALIST. 
Araucaria excelsa, the Norfolk Island pine, should scarcely be 
mentioned here, for it is not hardy enough for gardens : it is, how¬ 
ever, so familiar as a pot plant in parlours that I have ventured 
to introduce it in connection with its near relation, the monkey 
puzzle. From the latter it differs in its more slender foliage 
and fernlike branches ; but this spreading foliage is the juvenile 
type only ; when mature the leaves are stiff and scale-like, 
and curve closely upwards. This also forms a handsome tree, 
from 150 to 230 feet high, with a girth of thirty feet, in its home 
in Norfolk Island, far to the east of Australia. 
The genus Abies, the silver-firs, includes a large number of 
beautiful trees, only three of which I have seen in gardens near 
London. 
The silver-firs are characterized by their scattered needle¬ 
like leaves, which are flattened and usually waxy beneath and 
traversed by two resin canals ; the cones are erect, and when 
mature their scales fall away from the persistent axis. 
Abies pectinata, the common European silver-fir, and A. 
Nordmanniana from the Caucasus, both grow in a few gardens 
in Wanstead and South Woodford. Young plants look health)', 
but they soon dwindle in our smoky air. They are closely allied 
to each other, but the European silver-fir has its foliage arranged 
usually as in a yew, or like a double comb, while in the Caucasian 
species it is arranged like a brush. They both form extensive 
forests on their native mountains. In England, Nordmann’s 
silver-fir is the hardier species and less liable to disease than 
Abies pectinata. 
The third species of Abies that I know of near here is A. 
pinsapo, the Spanish silver-fir, distinguished from its allies by 
having the stiff leaves standing out all round the branches with 
a bottle-brush effect. Its home is on the high mountains in the 
South of Spain, where, exposed to great heat and cold, it forms 
forests close to the snow-line. A healthy tree grows in a garden, 
north of Chingford. 
The Douglas fir or spruce, Pseudotsuga Douglasii, may be 
seen as a small spreading tree about eighteen feet high in a 
Woodford garden. It resembles some of the silver-firs in fol¬ 
iage, but has drooping, not erect, cones, which at length fall off 
entire. The three pronged carpels or bracts project far beyond 
the ovuliferous scales. Even without the cones the Douglas 
