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habit, usually growing on sand dunes, rocky places, and dry hills and mountains, and widely distributed in the United States from Delaware and Pennsylvania to Utah and Colorado, is considered by some to be a variety of this species, but is probably distinct.

This species is widely distributed, occurring in the north from Quebec to Manitoba, and extending southward to Louisiana, Missouri, Kansas, and North Carolina. Its exact distribution is not clearly known, as it has been confused with other species ; but it appears to be commoner in the north and east, while C. crassifolia is most prevalent in the Mississippi valley and west of the Alleghanies. It is replaced by C. mississippiensis in the extreme south, and by C. reticulata in the dry regions of the far west.

In New England it is a low round-headed tree, and is well depicted by Sargent in Garden and Forest, iii. 39, fig. 43 (1890), which represents a tree growing close to the seashore in Massachusetts. It is not common east of the Hudson,! but on the banks of this river grows with a slender trunk and long graceful pendulous branches. Amongst North American species none, perhaps, retains its foliage green and fresh so late in the season. (A.H.)

The American Nettle Tree or Hackberry was introduced into England in 1656 by Tradescant, and the first description of the species, made from a tree cultivated in England, was published in Ray’s Historia Plantarum, ii. 1917. It seems to be the only species of Celtis which bears our climate well enough to be worth planting, but is so rare in cultivation that very few people know it, and it is rarely found in nurseries.

I have found it easy to raise from seed, and though the seedlings grow slowly and are somewhat susceptible to frost when young, it will, as it grows older, endure a greater degree of cold in winter than C. australis. The largest tree mentioned by Loudon was one at Syon, which, in 1838, was 54 feet high and 7 feet in girth. This cannot be the same as one which now grows there, which, according to the garden catalogue, was 50 feet by 3 feet 3 inches in 1849, and when I measured it in 1903, was 60 feet by 4 feet 4 inches. There is a fine tree in Kew Gardens, which, owing to its being crowded on one side by an evergreen oak, leans considerably, and is about 45 to 50 feet by 6 feet 4 inches. This is probably one of the original trees of the Kew Arboretum, though not mentioned by Loudon, unless, as is possible, he mistook it for C. australis.

The finest and best-shaped tree, however, that we know of, is one at West Dean Park (Plate 251), which is probably the one mentioned by Loudon as then fourteen years planted and 19 feet high. Now it is 50 feet by 54 feet, and when I saw it in July 1906 was bearing fruit abundantly. This tree evidently lives to a consider- able age, as I saw one in the Botanic Gardens at Padua which was planted in 1760, and measures no less than 32 metres high by 2 metres in girth, with a fine clean bole.

Henry saw a good specimen in the Botanic Garden at Copenhagen. (H.J.E.)

1 Garden and Forest, i. 465 (1888).