272 ENGLISH BOTANY. 



secretion in any quantity. The way in wliicli rosin is obtained from tlie pinaster In 

 France is described at length in Mr. Loudon's arboretum. When the trees liave attained 

 the age of from twenty-five to thirty years, with trunks about four feet in circumfer- 

 ence, they are thought to have acquired sufficient strength to bear the extraction of 

 their sap. The resinier (which is the name given to the person who collects the resin) 

 usually tests the tree by putting his arm round it, and if the trunk is so thick that he 

 cannot see his fingers on the other side, he considers the tree of sufficient size for him 

 to commence his operations. A wound is made in the lower part of the trunk, and a 

 small trough attached to it, through which the fluid resin flows into a reservoir. 

 Every week the wound requires reopening and slightly increasing, and one man is 

 expected to manage from 1,500 to 2,000 trees. The operation is continued annually 

 on the same tree by removing a portion of the bark till the part laid bare is from twelve 

 to fifteen feet in height, which takes place in seven or eight years. To procure tar, 

 the wood of the tree is burned, and during this process lampblack is formed on the 

 cover of the furnace ; but a superior kind is made from the straw, &c., used in straining 

 the resin, which is burned for the sole purpose of obtaining this pigment. Turpentine 

 is rarely made from the pinaster, as it is very inferior to that produced from the silver 

 fir, though recently, when the ports of the Southern States of America were blockaded, 

 the bulk of the turpentine used in this country was from the pinaster. There are 

 many other species of pine not naturalised in this country, though extensively culti- 

 vated. The Stone Pine, P. lyinea, a native of Southern Europe and the Levant, is one 

 of the species of which the seeds are eaten. They are called Pignons by the French, 

 PinoccM by the Italians, and are commonly eaten for dessert, and made into sweet- 

 meats. Several other species also yield eatable seeds, such as P. Sahiniana, the seeds 

 of which are collected in immense quantities by the Californian and Oregon Indians 

 as an article of winter food. The Firs, distinguished generally from the Pines as 

 belonging to the genus Abies, but greatly resembling them, yield the same products, 

 but are none of them British natives. The common Norway spruce fir, A. excelsa, 

 yields a resin known as frankincense, which, when melted in water and strained, 

 becomes Burgundy pitch. The young leaf- buds or shoots are boiled do^\^l in Avater 

 to form essence of spruce, from which spruce beer is made ; and its timber is much 

 used under the name of white deal. A. picea, the silver fir, yields the finest turpen- 

 tine ; and A. larix is the common Larch Fir, the wood of which is much prized, and is 

 very durable. 



Sub-Order IL— CUPRESSINEiE. 



Male flowers in catkins. Female flowers few, in a small catkin, 

 consisting of scales on which the ovules are borne, the apex or opening 

 of the ovule superior, the scales not in the axil of bracts. Fruit a small 

 cone, with woody or leathery scales, or of 3 to 6 fleshy scales, cohering 

 and forming a false drupe or berry. 



GENUS //.—JUNIPER US. Li?i7i. 



Flowers dioecious, or" rarely monoecious on difi^crent branches of 

 the same plant. ^lale flowers in minute globular solitary axillary 



