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have broader bands of stomata than in that species—eight to twelve lines in A. Fraseri, usually only six lines in A. balsamea. The cones differ mainly in the larger bracts, which are much exserted and reflexed over the edges of the scales next below ; whereas in A. balsamea the bracts are either concealed, or, if slightly exserted, are never reflexed. (A.H.)

Abies Fraseri is very restricted in its range of distribution, being only found in the Alleghany Mountains of south-western Virginia, North Carolina, and eastern Tennessee, where it often forms forests of considerable extent at elevations of 4000 to 6000 feet above sea-level. These forests are usually pure; but occasionally this species grows mixed with black spruce, birch, and beech. The tree averages about 40 feet in height ; it only rarely attains 70 feet.

Sargent in an article’ on this species gives a good illustration of a forest, at about 5000 feet altitude on the Black Mountain range, a spur of the Blue Ridge in North Carolina; which is very like some forests that I saw when I visited this most interesting region in 1895.

Abies Fraseri was discovered by the Scotch traveller and botanist whose name it bears, John Fraser, in the first decade of the nineteenth century ; and plants of it were first distributed from Messrs. Lee’s nursery, at Hammersmith, in 1811. The excellent figure in Pinetum Woburnense, was taken from the original tree in this nursery, where it had then attained 16 feet in height, at about twenty-eight years of age.

The tree is short-lived, and the plants of the first introduction are probably all long since dead. According to Sargent,’ seeds of A. balsamea, collected in Pennsyl- vania and Canada, where specimens are occasionally found, in which the tips of the bracts of the cone are slightly exserted, have been very generally sold as A. Fraseri, Seedlings of the Carolina tree were, however, distributed by the Arnold Arboretum a few years prior to 1889. We know of no trees of any size now living in this country. Some seedlings which I brought from N. Carolina in 1895 soon died. (H.J.E.)

1 Garden and Forest, ii. 472, fig. 132 (1889).