CHAP. CXIII.

coni'feka;, ■ auauca'ria.

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accompanied the expedition, procured cones, seeds from which he sowed onboard the ship, and brought home living plants, which he presented to SirJoseph Banks , who planted one of them in his own garden at Spring Grove,and sent the others to Kew. From this circumstance, the tree was called atfirst, in England, Sir Joseph Banks ’s pine. The tree at Kew was kept in thegreen-house till about 1806 or 1808, when it was planted out where it nowstands, by Mr. M‘Nab, the present superintendent of the Edinburgh BotanicGarden. After it was planted out, not being considered quite hardy, it wasprotected, during winter, with a temporary frame, covered with mats; and,having become habituated to this mode of treatment, it has been consideredunsafe to leave it off'. The species is, however, now found quite hardy atDropmore, and other places; and we have no doubt that, as soon as plantscan be procured from seed at a reasonable rate, it will be as generally plantedas the cedar of Lebanon , or the deodar, and will be found to be quite as hardyas these trees.

The Araucaria imbricata was introduced into France before 1822, and wastreated there as a hot-house plant. Dr. Pceppig, who introduced it intoGermany , gives the following description of the difficulty which attended hisprocuring seeds : — “We were obliged to seek water at a considerable distancefrom our bivouac; but, our frugal supper not requiring much cooking, wesoon stretched ourselves on the hard rock to sleep, under the lullaby of astorm, to which the lofty summits above us imparted the most singular tones.All of us who had been accustomed to such primitive beds might have restedwell enough, if a fog had not descended upon us about midnight, which wasso dense as nearly to extinguish our fire. Matters became still worse, whenviolent thunder and hail apprised us that not even a forest of araucariascould shelter the traveller from the wrath of the Cordillera. We all trembled ;my companions, however, chiefly from fear and superstition; though the tem-perature was sufficiently low to occasion a shudder in thinly clad travellers.The anxiously looked-for morning brought a brighter sky, and the means ofkindling a cheerful and genial fire. A young man, who had joined us thepreceding day, succeeded (by means of his lasso, which he threw over one ofthe lowest branches) in ascending a tree, from which he brought down manybranches, loaded with their truly colossal fruit, which have since arrivedsafely in Germany.” ( Pceppig’s Travels in the Peruvian Andes , as quoted inComp. Bot. Mag., vol. i. p. 355.) “ The reason,” he adds, “ why many ofthe seeds of the araucaria that have been sent to Europe did not vegetate is,because the collectors did not procure them from the Indian country, butbought them in the market at Valparaiso, where they are offered for saleboiled and dried. My excursion to Quillay-Leuvu obtained for me freshseeds of the araucaria, which reached Germany in October, 1829, being sevenmonths after they were ripe; and, being sowed immediately, the period wasjust that of the Chilian spring. Of some hundreds, about 30 came up; butignorance of the true climate, which led to the error of placing the youngplants in a hot-house, killed the greater part during the first year. To mygreat satisfaction, however, about six individual plants have been preservedin different places. The specimen in the Botanic Garden at Leipzic flou-rishes beautifully: it is (? 1832) about 1ft. 8 in. high, and already bearsfour long branches in whorls.” (Ibid.)

Properties and Uses. Don Joseph Pavon describes the wood of this treeas of a yellowish white, fibrous, and full of beautiful veins, capable of beingpolished and worked with facility. He also states that it is well adapted forship-building, as was proved by the experiments of Don Francisco Denda-riarena, in 1780. The resin, abounding in all parts of the tree, is white : itssmell is like that of frankincense, and its taste not unpleasant. It is appliedas a plaster to contusions, and for various medical purposes. The Indiansconsider the fruit as a very nourishing food: they est it raw, as well asboiled and roasted; and they distil from it a kind of spirituous liquor. Theyhave stated times to collect the fruit, which they preserve to make use of as

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