Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/169

 *[Footnote: Juniper (Juniperus squamata, Don., and J. excelsa, Bieberst; Juniperus excelsa is also found at Schipke in Thibet, in Asia Minor, in Syria, and in the Greek Islands). Thuja, Taxodium, Larix, and Araucaria, are forms found in the New Continent, but wanting in the Himalaya.

Besides the 20 species of Pines which we already know from Mexico, the United States of North America, which in their present extent reach to the Shores of the Pacific, have 45 described species, while Europe has only 15. There is a similar difference in respect to Oaks: i. e. greater variety of forms in the New Continent which extends continuously through a greater extent of latitude. The recent very exact researches of Siebold and Zuccarini have, however, completely refuted the previous belief, that many European species of Pines extend also across the whole of Northern Asia to the Islands of Japan, and even grow there, interspersed, as Thunberg has stated, with genuine Mexican species, the Weymouth Pine, Pinus Strobus of Linnæus. What Thunberg took for European Pines are wholly different and distinct species. Thunberg's Red Pine (Pinus abies, Linn.) is P. polita, (Sieb.) and is often planted near Buddhistic temples; his common Scotch Fir (Pinus sylvestris) is P. Massoniana (Lamb.); his P. cembra (the German and Siberian pine with eatable seeds) is P. parviflora (Sieb.); his common Larch (P. larix) is P. leptolepis (Sieb.); and his supposed Taxus baccata, the fruits of which are eaten by Japanese courtiers in case of long-protracted court ceremonials, (Thunberg, Flora Japonica, p. 275), constitutes a distinct genus, and is the Cephalotaxus drupacea of Siebold.]*