I. THE PINES. 53 



and which have been regarded with superstition or incredulity, 

 of showers of sulphur.* 



The female flower has till recently been considered as a pis- 

 til enclosed by a calyx and accompanied by one or more scales. 

 Robert Brown has satisfactorily shown that in all plants of this 

 natural family, there is neither pistil nor stigma, but that what 

 have been considered such, are merely the extremities of a tube 

 leading to a naked ovule, which is fertilized by the direct con- 

 tact of the pollen from the male flower. In several of the gen- 

 era the female flowers are single, and terminal or axillary. In 

 most others they are arranged in cones. They are extremely 

 simple, consisting usually of two scales, one which hardens 

 and enlarges and forms a part of the surface of the cone, and a 

 thinner one within it. 



The ovary, with the calyx scale to which it more or less 

 adheres, becomes the fruit. These have a great variety of 

 appearance, from the fleshy, berry -like fruit of the yew and juni- 

 per, to the winged scale of the pine ; but, when carefully exam- 

 ined, in their earlier stages, they are seen to have a strong resem- 

 blance ; the fruit of the yew being formed by an extraordinary 

 development of the receptacle, which, in most of the other genera, 

 experiences little change, in the true pines a portion only of 

 calyx expanding into a membranous wing. 



The cones of many of the pines require two or three years to 

 come to perfection. That of Pinus pinea, the stone pine of 

 Europe, with edible seeds, requires four. During the first sea- 

 son the cone attains one-third part of its size ; in the second it 

 reaches its full size but remains green ; in the third the scales 

 usually become dry, change color and open, and the winged 

 seed escapes and is carried to a distance by the winds. 



The seeds of many of the pines are large and eatable. Those 

 of our forests are small, but they are eagerly eaten by such birds 

 as have the means of separating them from their cones ; such 

 as the pine cross-bill; and they furnish a portion of the winter's 



* Poiret, Botanique, Dictionnaire Methodique, V., 331. Lambert, describing the 

 common Scotch fir, says, " The pollen is sometimes in spring carried away by the 

 wind in such quantities, as to alarm the ignorant with the notion of its raining 

 brimstone." — Genus Pinus, p. 2. 



