10 PINES 



care to, snatch occasional moments from the many 

 counter-attractions of a country-spent life, from 

 sports and games of bandied balls, and not only from 

 such pursuits as are of a more pleasurable nature, 

 but also from those inglorious — because they who 

 follow them are not glory seekers — and accumulating 

 duties of county civic life, and they in number are 

 many ; while those who can find the time to devote 

 a life or even a decade of life to the closer study of 

 one subject, and make of it an absorbing and pet 

 distraction, are few, very few. 



This must be our apology for venturing on an 

 exposition of a few points, and their family differences. 

 In two of them, namely P. Excelsa and P. Strobus, let 

 it be noted the leaves are arranged after the pendulous 

 or flowing-mane fashion, while the other two, P. Peuke 

 and Monticola, follow the vertical or hogged-mane 

 type. These two modes of leaf habit (commented on 

 previously) put up such a different show that the 

 P. Excelsa and P. Strobus ought to be discriminated 

 from the P. Peuke and P. Monticola at a glance, and 

 divided as surely as sheep were ever divided from 

 goats by the eye of practised shepherd. This point 

 of difference of appearance only carries us part of 

 the way. It offers no suggestions as to how we are 

 to pick up the Excelsa from the Strobus, or, to give 

 them their English names, the Bhotan from the 

 Weymouth. As these two trees happen to be pre- 

 cisely the two Pines that those " who go to and fro 

 in the earth and wander up and down it " are more 

 constantly encountering perhaps than any other of 

 its imported species, it is quite worth while calling 

 a little attention to some of their phases and forms. 



P. Excelsa is the larger edition of the two all round. 

 It has longer cones, leaves, and basal sheaths ; its 

 bark is more fissured than the smoother grey-barked 

 Weymouth. But a larger and a smaller edition, when 



