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 healthy,
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