CHAP. CXIII.
CONI FICKLE.
2463
catkin a small cone, somewhatpendent, obtusely tetragonal.
Scales disposed in four ranks,pediculate, buckler-shaped,and of a pale yellow. Anthers3 or 4 at the base of eachscale; sessile, somewhatrounded. Female catkins so-litary, and situated at thesummit of the branches. Conetetragonal, with obtuse an-gles ; scales 4, woody, thick,heart-shaped, hollowed longi-tudinally on their exteriorsurface, convex on the inte-rior, and open from the baseto the summit; the two largeopposite scales bearing seeds,and the two small ones sterile.
Seeds few, small, and witha wing at the side. A native of Mount Atlas , and of other uncultivated hillson the coast of Africa , where it was discovered by Desfontaines, and seeds sentto the Jardin des Plantes, about 1796. The trees seen by Desfontaines in Al-giers were only from 15 ft. to 20 ft. high ; but Broussonet states that he hadseen larger ones in the kingdom of Morocco . In the climate of Paris, itrequires the protection of the conservatory during winter. In the con-servatory of the Botanical Garden, at Berlin, there is a plant 15 ft. high,which flowers and fruits every year, but the seeds do not germinate. Cal-litris quadrivalvis was introduced into England in 1815; and there are plantsat Messrs. Loddiges’s, where, trained against thq wall of one of their green-houses, it grows vigorously, and in January, 1832, flowered for the firsttime in this country. There are also plants in some other collections,hut it is by no means common. In the kingdom of Morocco , accordingto Broussonet , this tree produces the gum sandarach of commerce. Thissubstance is in tears, clear, shining, diaphanous, of a whitish yellow, and freefrom impurities. Dissolved in the spirit of wine, it produces a delicate varnish,easily scratched; reduced to a fine powder, it forms a very superior kind ofpounce, and is applied to paper and parchment to make them bear ink. It wasfor a long time thought that the gum sandarach was obtained from some speciesof/uniperus. Captain S. E. Cook, in his Sketches in Spain , vol. ii., has broughtto light the interesting fact, that the woodwork of the roof of the celebratedmosque, now the cathedral of Cordova, which was built in the ninth century,was of the wood of this tree. It had been previously thought to be that ofthe larch, from the resemblance of the Spanish word alerce, which is appliedto the wood of Callitris quadrivalvis in Spain and Barbary, to the Latin wordlark ; whence the English word larch. The larch, however, is not found in anypart of Spain . After carefully examining the wood in question, and comparingit with the timber of the roofs of the Alhambra , the Alcaza, or Royal Palaceof Seville, and other remains of the Moors in Andalusia , the roofs of whichate of the Pinus Pinea, or stone pine, once extensively grown in Andalusia ,Captain Cook came to the conclusion, that the origin of the timber of themosque must be sought elsewhere, and that it was not of any Spanish or evenEuropean , tree. “ By a singular coincidence, the subject had been undergoinginvestigation about the same time in Africa. Mr. Drummond Hay, the British consul at Tangier, had, by tracing the Arabic etymology of the word alerce,by availing himself of the extensive botanical researches of the late Mr.Schawboe, the Danish consul in Morocco , and by collating the accounts ofAc resident Moors, made out that the alerce was the Thuja articulata,fiesf. (Callitris quadrivalvis Vent.), which grows on Mount Atlas , in the