HOME NATURE-STUDY COURSE. 



THE EVERGREENS. 



Spite of winter, thou keep'st thy green glory, 



Lusty father of Titans past number! 



The snow-flakes alone make thee hoary, 



NestUng close to thy branches in slumber, 



And thee mantling with silence. ■ — Lowell. 



Not only are the evergreens among our most useful and valuable 

 trees, but they are also most beautiful to look upon; in the winter 

 they give us masses of color in the snowy landscape, and in the 

 summer they add great richness and beauty to the hues of the wood- 

 lands. These evergreens are the aristocracy of the tree world; they 

 represent the oldest families, for members of the group to which they 

 belong appeared as early as the Silurian age; the evergreens were 

 probably at their height in numbers of species and magnificence of 

 development during the Triassic period. The pines were contem- 

 poraries of all those plants which were put to sleep in the Devonian 

 age, in our coal beds of to-day. The evergreens are a dignified rem- 

 nant of an older tree-race, which is being pushed to the wall by those 

 upstarts, the oaks and maples and other deciduous trees. They 

 still cling to the sandy shores where there is little to support other 

 trees; and to the mountains and northern regions where other trees 

 have not the strength to endure. Perhaps it is because they belong 

 essentially to another geologic age when the climate was far different 

 than our chmate of to-day, that they do not shed their leaves in 

 winter like the adaptable deciduous trees. 



There are so few of the evergreens in any locality that it is easy to 

 learn all the species present, and in this lesson we will study those 

 species most common in New York State. We will discuss the 

 pines, the tamaracks, the spruces, the cedars, the firs and the hem- 

 locks. 



There is one fundamental difference between the evergreens and 

 other trees, which has given rise to some hard botanical names. 

 The ovule is a little body that by the help of pollen ripens into a seed. 

 Most plant species, hke the apples, the maples and the sweet-peas, etc., 

 have these ovules in a closed receptacle, which is called the ovary, 

 where they ripen protected. Such plants are called Angiosperms, 

 which means "hidden seed.'' The cone-bearing plants or evergreens 



