The Maiden Hair tree of China and Japan, which was introduced into Europe early in the eighteenth century, has now become fairly well known. Though hardy in England, it requires warmer summers for full development and regular flowering. To botanists this Eastern tree is of peculiar interest, partly because of the isolated position it occupies in the plant-kingdom and partly by reason of its great antiquity. There is probably no other existing tree which has so strong a claim to be styled a 'living fossil,' to use a term applied by Darwin to survivals from the past. In 1712 the traveller Kaempfer proposed for this plant the generic name Ginkgo, and Linnaeus adopted this designation, adding the specific name _biloba_ to denote the bisection of the wedge-shaped lamina of the leaf into two divergent segments. In 1777 the English botanist Sir J. E. Smith expressed his disapproval of what he called the uncouth name Ginkgo by substituting for _Ginkgo biloba_ the title Salisburia adiantifolia, but as it is customary to retain names adopted or proposed by Linnaeus, the founder of the binominal system of nomenclature, the correct botanical designation of the maiden hair tree is _Ginkgo biloba_. Mere personal preference such as that of Sir J. E. Smith for Salisburia is not an adequate reason for rejecting an older name. [Illustration: Fig. 19. _Ginkgo biloba_ Linn. (Slightly reduced.)] In its pyramidal habit Ginkgo agrees generally with the larch and other Conifers. Like the larch and cedar it possesses two kinds of foliage shoots, the more rapidly growing long shoots with scattered leaves and the much shorter dwarf-shoots which elongate slightly each year and bear several leaves crowded round their apex. The leaves (Fig. 19), which are shed each year, are similar in the cuneate form of the lamina and in the fan-like distribution of the forked veins, to the large leaflets of some species of maiden hair ferns: the thin lamina carried by a slender leaf-stalk is usually about 3 inches across, though in exceptional cases it may reach a breadth of 8 inches. The lamina is usually divided by a deep =V=-shaped sinus into two equal halves; it may be entire with an irregularly crenulate margin, or, on seedlings and vigorous long shoots, the lamina may be cut into several wedge-shaped segments.