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. FOOTNOTES: [1] _Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, Introduction, p. xv. [2] _Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, ii. 334. [3] _Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, ii. 328. [4] _Sylva_, chap. iii. section 2. [5] _The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, by H. J. Elwes and Augustine Henry, vol. i. p. 20. [6] Holly. [7] Sycamore. [8] Probably the ash. [9] The summer of 1914 was noted for a similar abundance of seed on the wych elm. [10] _Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, p. 1881. [11] _British Forest Trees_, 1842, p. 208. [12] _British Forest Trees_, p. 229. [13] _A Traveller's Notes_, by J. H. Veitch, p. 105. [14] Selby's _British Forest Trees_, p. 141. [15] Since writing this I have received from a friendly correspondent a bottle of elder-berry wine, and must confess that I conceived no desire for a second bottle. [16] _Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, p. 34. [17] _Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, ii. 411-417. [18] A "dole" (in charity) is merely a dialectic variant of "deal." [19] One of these, a sycamore at Ellon, was blown down in 1873. [20] _Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, Vol. ii. p. 363. [21] David Sharp in _Cambridge Natural History_, Vol. vi. p. 583 (1899). [22] Professor Sargent says, "sometimes 250 feet high." [23] _The Yew Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, p. 60, by John Lowe, M. D., 1897. [24] _Ibid._, p. 59. [25] With all the trees that thou hast tended, Thy brief concern is well-nigh ended, Except the cypress--_that_ may wave Its hateful symbol o'er thy grave. (Horace, _Odes_, ii. 14.)