Home Nature-Study Course. 377 



THE LARCH OR TAMARACK. 



The larches are most graceful and beautiful trees, forming slender 

 pyramids often 100 feet in height. Our native species in New York 

 State loves the high, cold swamps, and may be found in quantities 

 about the margins of our Adirondack lakes. It has many, long, 

 tough, fibrous roots which especially fit it for hfe in swampy ground. 

 The larch spray is exceedingly beautiful, as the leaves are attached 

 in whorls to little knobs along the side of a branch. In the European 

 larch, which is commonly planted as an ornamental tree, there may 

 be forty or fifty of the needle-hke leaves attached to each one of these 

 knobs, which is really a twig shortened to about one-eighth of an inch; 

 the spray thus has a tufted appearance, each long, terminal twig 

 looking as if it were decorated mth fluffy tassels. In the autumn the 

 leaves turn a dull "old-gold" and fall to the ground, which is a very 

 im usual performance on the part of the leaves of a cone-bearing tree. 



Lesson on the Larch or Tamarack. 



14. Describe or figure the cones, giving size, color and shape. 



15. Do they grow at the tip or along the sides of the branches? 



16. Do they stand up or hang down? 



17. What is the special value of the tamarack wood? 



18. Why is it used for water pipes? 



19. What does Longfellow say about the larch in Hiawatha? 



20. If you have ever been in a tamarack swamp, describe it. 



PINES. 



Among all of our tree friends the pines are the most companionable, 

 for they are the only ones which habitually condescend to conversa- 

 tion. I have several friends among the pines, and each has its o-\\'n 

 tone of voice and tells a different story; and one rarely speaks at all. 

 Aside from being friendly trees, the pines are most interesting as 

 subjects of study. The arrangement of their tasseled leaves, and 

 their mathematically tessellated cones, their whorled branches and 

 their mighty roots spreading far on each side, afford inviting subjects 

 for study. If we live in a land where stump fences aboimd then we 

 have excellent opportunities for studying the great underground 

 system of these splendid trees. The pines require at least two 

 seasons for maturing their cones, differing in this respect from the 

 other evergreens. 



We have common in almost every locality in New York State two 

 species of pine, the white and the pitch-pine. Here and there in the 

 forests occurs the red pine; and on the sandy soils of Long Island 



