CHAP. CXIII.

coni'fera:.

^bie'tin/e.

2449

and fine grain of the wood, made Captain Cookthink that, if it proved light enough, it wouldmake excellent masts. In consequence of hisreport, but several years afterwards, a smallspar was brought to England by the Catharinewhale.ship, which proved, to use the seamen’sphrase, “ a stick of first-rate quality.” Cap-tain Cruise was afterwards sent out in theDromedary to bring home some spars of thiswood. He found many trees with trunkslOO ft.high, without a single branch, and then form-ing large heads; while the trunks of others,not so tall, were 40 ft. in circumference. Itwas, however, very difficult to procure spars, asthe large trees grew on the very summit of thehighest hills. Two ships were afterwards sentout under Captain Downie, who not onlybrought home timber, but a living plant, whichwas presented to the Horticultural Societyabout 1821. (See Lamb. Pin., ed. 2.,2. p. 103.)

In 1833, another expedition was sent out forkauri pine in His Majesty’s ship Buffalo; andit was accompanied from Sydney by the lateMr. Richard Cunningham, who found “ manyfair and noble specimens of the undisputedmonarch of the forest, the kauri pines with theirvast heads towering above the other gigantictimbers of those deeply shaded regions, sup-porting on their upper branches large tufts ofthose tillandsia-like epiphytes, the species ofAstdlia, originally discovered by Sir JosephBanks. These plants are much valued by thenatives for the sweetness of the stem on whichthe flowers grow. They (the natives) will climb,says Mr. Gates, the highest tree, in search ofthese epiphytes ; and, when they have gatheredthem, they will sit for a long time at the bot-tom of the tree, sucking out the juice of thestem ; which to them, especially on a hot day,is peculiarly grateful. These plants give thesmaller groves the appearance of an Englishrookery, and there only wants thetui (iV/feropscincinnatus Lath .), that polyglot bird of thewoods of New Zealand, to imitate the cawingof the rook, to make the deception complete.”

{Comp, to Pot. Mag., ii. p. 217.) The excellence of the wood of this tree has been already mentioned, and Mr. Lambert adds to his account of it, that, on an experiment being tried as to the comparative strength of the wood, and that of the Riga pine, the result was as follows : —Both pineswere 1 | in. square, 3 ft. long, and suspended 10 in. from the end. The kauri pine bore a weight of1 cwt. 2qr. and 151b. before it broke, and the Riga pine only 1 cwt. 2qr. and lib.; but thekauri pine weighed lib. 13oz., while the Riga pine weighed only lib. 8oz. {Lamb. Pin.) In1837, a contract was made to send a large quantity of wood of this pine to England. The tree yields,both spontaneously and by incision, a great quantity of pure limpid resin, which hardens by exposureto the air, and which is excellent as varnish. In 1837, Mr. Lambert received an immense mass ofthis resin, 6 in. or 8 in. in diameter. The outside is opaque, and of a dirty white ; but, where broken,it has a glassy transparent look, and a pale green tinge. The Dammara australis was first treatedas a hot-house plant in England, but has since been found to thrive better in the green-house.There is a tree planted out at Dropmore, which, in 1837, was 5ft. high. It was, however, veryunhealthy, and requires to be strongly protected in winter.

App. i, A Tabular View of the principal Pinetums, or Collectionsof Kbietince , in Europe.

The names of the pinetums are arranged, as nearly as could be ascertained,in the order in which they were commenced; and the species in the orderin which they are described in the preceding pages. The existence of aspecies in any pinetum is indicated by its height in feet, according to measure-ments sent us in 1837; but, when the height is not exactly known, the exist-ence of a species or variety in any pinetum or collection is indicated by across, thus + . When the species or variety is of doubtful existence in anycollection, a point of interrogation is used; and when it is wanting, a cipheris introduced.

It is proper to observe, that our table, which occupies the two followingpages, does not contain nearly so many names purporting to be species andvarieties, as are in some of the original lists of the collections sent to us. Forexample, in the catalogue of the pinetum at Flitwick, (which ranks next tothat at Dropmore, in the number of kinds,) there are of Pinus 59 names ofspecies and varieties, of .d'bies (including Picea) 27, and of iarix 7. Thereason why we have omitted several of these names is, that we are doubtful asto the application of some of them, and consider others as only varieties, or as

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