Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol01.djvu/75

Rh was planted out on what is now called Lawn L, and was at first protected during winter by a frame covered with mats. Here it grew for many years and attained the height of 12 feet in 1836 (fide Loudon), but eventually died in the autumn of 1892 at the age of nearly 100 years. This is probably the tree figured by Lambert.

The first person who gives any account of the tree in its native forests, so far as I know, is Dr. Poeppig, whose account of the tree is printed in ''Companion to Bot. Mag.'' i. 351-355. It did not, however, become common in cultivation till the celebrated botanical traveller William Lobb, who was sent to South America by the firm of Veitch, sent home in 1844 a good supply of seeds which produced most of the finest trees now in England.

No account of his travels were, however, published, and on applying to Messrs Veitch before I went to Chile in 1901 I was informed that his journals, which I wished to consult, could not be found. The late Miss Marianne North was the first English traveller who published any account of the tree in its native forests, which she visited on her last journey in November 1884, mainly, as she says, for the purpose of painting this tree. But, owing to the difficulty and danger at that time of reaching the Andes, she went to the coast range of Araucania, called Nahuelbuta, which lies between the sea and the town of Angol, in the same district where the tree was probably first discovered. After describing her ride up from Angol to the mountains, which are here covered with a beautiful vegetation, among which Gunnera, Lapageria, Embothrium, Fuchsia, Buddleia, Alstroemeria, and many other favourite plants in English gardens are conspicuous, she says: —

"The first Araucarias we reached were in a boggy valley, but they also grew to the very tops of the rocky hills, and seemed to drive all other trees away, covering many miles of hill and valley; but few specimens were to be found outside that forest. The ground underneath was gay with purple and pink everlasting peas, and some blue and white ones I had never seen in gardens, gorgeous orange orchids, and many tiny flowers whose names I did not know, which died as soon as they were picked, and could not be kept to paint. I saw none of the trees over 100 feet in height or 20 in circumference, and, strange to say, they seemed all to be very old or very young. I saw none of the noble specimens of middle age we have in English parks, with their lower branches resting on the ground. They did not become quite flat at the top, like those of Brazil, but were slightly domed like those in Queensland, and their shiny leaves glittered in the sunshine, while their trunks and branches were hung with white lichen, and the latter weighed down with cones as big as one's head. The smaller cones of the male trees were shaking off clouds of golden pollen, and were full of small grubs; these attracted flights of bronzy green parrakeets, which were busy over them. Those birds are said to be so clever that they can find a soft place in the great shell of the cone when ripe, into which they get the point of their sharp beak, and fidget with it until the whole cone cracks and the nuts fall to the ground. Men eat the nuts too, when properly cooked, like chestnuts. The most remarkable thing about the tree is its bark,