When we spend our holidays abroad in Switzerland or on the Mediterranean shores we come across many other flourishing, well-established kinds of pines, firs, and cypresses. And we need not leave England in order to make acquaintance with a very large number which have been introduced from abroad into plantations and parks, and grow under favourable circumstances, but cannot be said to have established themselves as naturalized inhabitants. Among those more anciently introduced is the cedar of Lebanon; of later introduction we have the Indian cedar or deodar, and the Weymouth pine, Pinus Strobus, a North American tree. Still later a veritable crowd of American, Himalayan, Japanese, and Chinese pine trees of one kind and another have been introduced by dealers and their rich clients, the owners of park plantations, so that it is now far easier to see in the grounds around great English houses all sorts of pine trees from remote regions of the earth than the British species, or those interesting European kinds which have some kind of community with them, and are, at any rate, objects of interest to the naturalist whose familiar ground is that of Europe. Most people are utterly perplexed by the number of kinds, and do not know one from another. In order to discuss a little further in detail the commoner kinds of Coniferæ besides those which may be considered as truly British, and have been mentioned above, we must take a glance at the plants related to the natural order Coniferæ, and then at the divisions of that natural order into families and tribes. The Coniferæ are an order of the great class of Gymnosperms--one of two classes into which the flowering plants or Phanerogams are divided, the other being (as explained above) the Angiosperms (palms, grasses, lilies, and all our ordinary trees, shrubs, and flower-bearing herbs). The orders included under "Gymnosperms" are: First, an order, the Pterido-spermia, comprising certain remarkable fossil forms connecting them with ferns; second, the order Cycadeæ, an ancient group, of which only a dozen or so kinds survive to this day; third, the order Gnetaceæ, including Wellwitch's strange African plant and the little European Ephedras, resembling the plants called horse-tails; fourth, the order of the Gingko trees of Japan, called also Salisburiæ, with leaves like those of the maiden's-hair fern. They and one or two others are survivors of an important extinct group (the Gingkoaceæ), which we know by their fossil remains flourished in great numbers before the chalk period. Then we have: fifth, the order Taxaceæ (or yew trees); and, sixth, the order Coniferæ (or cypresses, pines, cedars, and firs). The first four orders, though very interesting, exceptional plants we will leave aside, as they do not come very near to the Coniferæ. The order of yew trees, Taxaceæ, however, does come close to the Coniferæ, and sometimes they are grouped together. [Illustration: FIG. 32.--The Common Yew, Taxus baccata.