Very different in habit and appearance from the lightsome gingko is the araucaria or puzzle monkey, but, like the former, it is a survival of the vegetation that flourished in the carboniferous era, when it had to compete with giant ferns, cycads, and horse-tails, and attained its utmost development in the Jurassic landscape. Of the ten known species of araucaria, all indigenous only in the southern hemisphere, only one is hardy in Great Britain—A. imbricata—which forms forests on the mountains of southern Chile.

This tree was first brought to England in 1795 by Archibald Menzies, who, visiting Chile with Captain Vancouver, sowed some araucaria nuts on board ship and brought home six live seedlings. It was not till 1844, however, that any fresh supply of seeds reached this country, when William Lobb, collecting for the firm of Veitch, secured a large quantity. The quaint character of the tree, the readiness with which the seeds germinated, and its thorough adaptation to British soil and climate soon caused it to be widely distributed, so that at this day there is no tree with which people are more familiar than the puzzle monkey. At the same time, there is no tree which has suffered so much from injudicious planting among inappropriate surroundings. It is a creature demanding broad light and free, pure air; and I know of no more dismal object in the world of plants than an araucaria stuck down in front of a suburban villa, stifled with smoky deposit, retaining a despairing grip of life, whereof the only visible sign is the green tips of its poor blackened branches. It is treatment such as this which has caused the araucaria to lose favour with British planters. To realise what this tree is capable of in our hands, one has but to visit the Earl of Stair's grounds at Castle-Kennedy and stroll down a wide grassy avenue, two hundred yards in length, bordered on either side by araucarias over 50 feet high (see plate at page 232).

Effective in a different fashion must be the araucaria grove at Beauport, Sussex, which I have not seen. Here a number of these trees were planted about fifty years ago, and allowed to grow in forest canopy, the inner ones clearing their boles naturally. The largest of these, measured by Dr. Henry in 1904, was 74 feet high, with a girth of 7 feet 9 inches.

Again another effect. On the west shore of Loch Fyne, united to the mainland by a narrow neck of shingle, is Barmore Island, a grassy, rocky pile, treeless save for a solitary araucaria which some freakish hand has planted many years ago high on the northern slope. The impression received from this lonely foreigner is very enduring. (Let me not be misunderstood. I do not mean the physical impression, which would be distinctly disagreeable; but the mental one, which is most pleasing.)

Araucaria timber is said to be like good deal, but smoother and heavier. Like most primitive types of vegetation, the trees are of separate sexes, though exceptionally a tree may be found bearing male and female flowers. The male inflorescence is like a large, brown, pendant catkin, 4 or 5 inches long; the huge female cones take two years to ripen, when they open, and each discharges 200 or 300 large seeds, 1 to 1½ inch long. These seeds are freely produced in nearly all parts of Britain; self-sown seedlings spring up where the undergrowth permits them; and as an article of food the kernels are not to be despised when cooked as chestnuts.

The araucaria is one of many South Chilian plants which relish the climate of western Britain and Ireland. The character of climate in these widely-separated regions is curiously similar, though from diametrically opposite causes. In Chile abundant moisture arises from the afflux of a cold ocean current upon a warm coast; in the British Isles a warm ocean current flows upon the colder land.

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.