270 ENGLISH BOTANY. 



cess, who was so enraged that she forced her father to make war against the Jews, to 

 humble their pride. 



The victors at the Isthmian games held at Corinth were crowned with garlands of 

 pine branches. The cones were used by the Romans to flavour their wines, being 

 thrown into the vats and suffered to float — a custom which is still in existence in Italy. 

 Hence the thyrsus or wand of Bacchus terminates in a fir cone. The pine appears to 

 have been held sacred by the Assyrians. Mr. Layard tells us that on the sculptures 

 discovered by him during his excavations at Nimroud, the ancient Nineveh, there are 

 many representations of figures bearing fir cones. Tennyson's lines in " The Com- 

 plaint of CEnone " are familiar to many readers : — 



*' mother ! hear me yet before I die : 

 They came, they cut away my tallest pines, 

 My dark tall pines, that plumed the craggy ledge. 

 High over the blue gorge, and all between 

 The snowy peak and snow-white cataract, 

 Foster'd the callow eaglet, from beneath 

 Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn 

 The panther's roar came muffled while I sat 

 Low in the valley. Never, never more 

 Shall lone ffinone see the morning mist 

 Sweep through them — never see them overlaid 

 With narrow moonlit slips of silver cloud 

 Between the loud stream and the trembling stars." 



Gerarde states that these trees are " so full of a resinous substance that they burn 

 like a torch or Knke," and that they were therefore called " firre wood" and "/"'e 

 tvood." 



SPECIES II.-PINUS PINASTER. Ait. 



Plate MCCCLXXXI. 



Reich. Ic. Fl. Germ, et Helv. Vol. XI. Tab. DXXV. Fig. 1132. 

 P. maritima, Lam. Fl. Fr. Vol. II. p. 201 (non Ait.). 



Leaves 2 in a fascicle, distributed all round the stem, long, rigid, 

 channeled above, convex beneath, acute, pungent, cartilaginous- 

 serrulate, scarcely glaucous. Anther-scale conspicuously prolonged 

 beyond the anther-cells, and forming a denticulated crest. Cones in 

 pairs or^whorls of 3 to 7, rarely solitary, those of the year spreading, 

 shortly stalked; mature cones elliptical-lanceolate-conical, recurved 

 (or spreading-recurved when they are numerous in a whorl), acute, of 

 very numerous scales; escutcheon of the scales much thickened, 

 transversely rhombic, subpyramidal, with a transverse keel with a 

 prominent centre and an erect point. Solid part of the seed one-fifth 

 of the length from the base of the seed to the apex of the wing ; wing 

 pale along the outer curved margin, but with fuscous longitudinal 

 stripes from the straight inner margin to beyond the middle. 



