A few lines must be given to the Araucarianæ, Taxodinæ, and Cupressinæ. The Araucarianæ include, besides the Chilian monkey puzzle, an Australian species, and the New Zealand Dammar pine Agathis, which produces the amber-like Kauri gum. The leaves of the monkey puzzle are like the scales of a spruce cone in shape, and the ordinary branches are like elongated green spruce-cones, whilst the seed-cones have needle-like scales. The next family, the Taxodinæ, are in many respects intermediate in character, between the Abietinæ (true pines, cedars, and firs) and the Cupressinæ (cypresses and junipers). They have very small, lance-shaped leaves, closely packed, so as to overlap one another--as in the celebrated Wellingtonia or American Big-tree--and small cones, with hard, knob-like scales, resembling those of the most woody-coned Pinus, but few in number. The American Big-tree (native on the western slopes of the Californian Sierra Nevada) is named "Sequoia gigantea" by the botanists. It was introduced into England about sixty years ago. The Red-wood, of the Pacific coast of the United States, is another species of Sequoia (S. sempervirens), and it appears that a specimen of it has been measured as reaching 340 feet in height; whilst no living specimen of the S. gigantea has been definitely measured of more than 325 feet in height. There are several other large exotic, pine-like trees, which are placed in the Taxodinæ. The extraordinary and interesting tree called the Japanese umbrella pine (Sciadopitys verticillata) is associated with the Sequoias by some botanists; but it is in important respects unlike any other conifer. It has a very peculiar foliage, namely, rod-like leaflets, twenty to thirty in number, arranged in circlets or whorls like the spokes or ribs of an umbrella. The curious thing is that these are not "leaves," but, according to botanists, are leaf-like shoots or branchlets! It may be seen growing in Kew Gardens, where it was introduced thirty years ago.