mediate between that species and A. glutinosa. The branchlets are glabrous and covered with wax glands. This hybrid, which in general aspect strongly resembles A. cordata, but is readily distinguished by the thinner leaves, not cordate at the base, appears to be very vigorous in growth at Kew, where there is a tree growing beside the lake, which is 72 feet in height and 5 feet in girth. The bark is like that of A. cordata, being greyish in colour and slightly warty on the surface.
Alnus cordata has a very restricted distribution, being confined to Corsica and southern Italy. In Corsica it ascends to 3000 feet, as at Vizzavona, where I saw it in a beech forest, growing not only beside a stream, but also on the side of the hill at some little distance off. Here the trees were about 70 feet high and 5 feet in girth, with clean timber to 50 feet, and were narrowly pyramidal in habit, with ascending branches. It grows in southern Italy from the Bay of Naples south- wards; and according to Tenore occurs both on marshy ground and in the mountains. It forms woods on Mt. Serino.
This elegant species, with foliage somewhat resembling at a distance that of the Caucasian lime, which is retained late in the autumn, was introduced, according to Loudon,’ in 1820. It flowers in March, before the leaves appear; and seems to grow as fast and to be as hardy as the common alder.
It supports well the climate of the north of France; and at Nancy, where the winters are severe, flowers and fruits regularly, and has attained 7 inches in diameter after twelve years’ growth. According to Mouillefert,? it succeeds better on dry soils than either the common or the grey alder; and has been planted on the chalky soil of Champagne, where it is treated as coppice with a short revolution. At Grignon it has borne −4° Fahr. without injury, but suffered in 1880, when the temperature fell to −13° Fahr. Here on poor chalky soil it has attained, at thirty-five years old, 48 feet in height and 2 feet 8 inches in girth; and on better soil, 64 feet by 3 feet 1 inch.
The finest tree that we have seen of this species grows on the lawn at Tottenham House, Savernake, Wilts, and is a well-shaped tree, measuring no less than 69 feet high by 9 feet 3 inches in girth at four feet from the ground (Plate 254). When Elwes found it on April 3, 1908, it was in full flower, and covered with the cones of the previous year. It does not appear to be a very old tree, and is growing in a deep and rather heavy soil overlying chalk, at an elevation of about 400 feet.
In the new park at Merton Hall, Thetford, a tree, growing in a wind-swept situation, on very dry, light, sandy soil, measured in 1908, 50 feet high and to feet in girth, with a spread of branches 56 feet in diameter. Lord Walsingham believes that this tree was planted about 1843, as the new park was enclosed in the preceding year. The bark at the base is deeply fissured and scaly.
1 Arb, et Frut. Brit. 1689 (1838); but in Loudon, Gard. Mag. 1837, p. 143, and 1839, p. 39, a tree at Britwell House, Bucks, growing on gravelly soil, was reported to be 60 feet high ; and this would show that the date of introduction was earlier than 1820. So far as we can learn, this tree no longer exists,
2 Essences Forestières, 252 (1903). However, two trees at Verrières near Paris, about 80 years old, have only attained 60 feet in height and 5 feet 8 inches in girth; and M. Philippe L. de Vilmorin states (Hortus Vilmorinianus, 54 (1906)) that their growth seems to have come long ago to a standstill.
