1883.J 



BEAUTIES OF BRITISH TREES. 



13 



P. pyraster has * acuminate ' leaves, which, though downy beneath 

 when young, become smooth, and a typically pear-shaped fiuit, 

 tapering gradually into its stalk ; P. achras has broader leaves, 

 more abruptly pointed, which always remain downy or flocculent 

 below, and a more globular fruit, rounded at its stalk end ; whilst 

 P. hriggisii has almost smooth leaves, heart-shaped at the base, 

 and a very small globose fruit. As the habit of growth appears to be 

 the same in the three cases, there need be no preference in planting. 



FEMALE INFLOBESCENCB 

 OF PINUS SYLVESTBIS. 



The Pine, or Scotch Pir (Pulus sylvestris). 

 There can be no hesitation in saying that it 

 is only in Scotland that we now have tliis 

 noble tree in a wild state. It occurs in the 

 mountains of Southern Europe and in the 

 lower ground of higher latitudes, being found 

 in the Scotch Highlands at an altitude of 2,200 

 feet above the sea. It now forms a vast belt 

 of forest land across Siberia and Ilussia into 

 Prussia, Sweden and Norway, and was in 

 former ages found beneath the bogs of Den- 

 mark, Ireland and our English fen-land, and 

 in submerged forests both pre-glacial and post-glacial in age. It is 

 much planted on sandy soil in hilly situations throughout England, 

 «ince it will flourish in many situations where the more rapid growing 

 larch will not. This is the case, for instance, with the Bagshot sand 

 area of north and west Surrey and with the lower green sand wastes 

 of the middle of that county and of Bedfordshire, and far better is 

 it that those immense tracts of country should thus be turned to 

 account by the tree planter than that they should be abandoned to 

 the heather. 



Accustomed as we are to the short, much-branched stems of our 

 deciduous, or hardwood trees, the Pine is to us the very type of lofty 

 uprightness. Its straight stem, sometimes as much as twelve feet 

 in girth, attains a height of from fifty to a hundred feet ; but most of 

 us who remember them from our earliest years will echo Hood's 

 reminiscence of their impressive grandeur : 



* I remember, I remember 



The fir-trees dark and high ; 

 I used to think their slender tops 



Were close against the sky ; 

 It was a childish ignorance, 



But now 'tis little joy 

 To know I'm further off from heaven 



Than when I was a boy.' 



One of the great beauties of the tree is its rough reddish bark^ 



