p. RIGIDA 43 



to pronounce upon authoritatively, but we do claim 

 that of the half-dozen hard-wood Pines that hail 

 from the same district in which the scene of the Song 

 of Hiawatha is laid, on the southern shore of Lake 

 Superior, no tree among them could with more 

 faithfulness depict the blackness and gloom described 

 there than the Pinus Rigida. 



If the P. Patula is to be regarded as rightly 

 entitled to the award in a beauty competition, the 

 P. Rigida can put forward a very substantial claim 

 to a first prize in a class of precisely opposite 

 conditions. When the P. Rigida is set beside the 

 other members of the Abietineae, their few deformities 

 here and there shrink into insignificance by the side 

 of its deformities. In a similar-conditioned show, 

 Quasimodo, the hideous dwarf (in Victor Hugo's 

 Noire Dame), had only to put his head in the horse 

 collar for the briefest of moments to overmaster any 

 opposition that could be brought to bear against 

 him. The P. Rigida at Kew has only to be looked 

 at for a few moments to convince any beholder of its 

 ability to make as easy a conquest over any rival in 

 a similar competition. With its scarcity of twisted 

 leaves, its scrubby appearance, the unnatural look of 

 its adventitious branches — and sometimes even sta- 

 minate flowers poking their way out from the main 

 trunk — it gives an onlooker the idea that an unkind 

 Nature has doubled it up with every crippling com- 

 plexity, and pelted it with every disability that 

 plant life or human life could be heir to. 



As a profitable institution it ranks high in its own 

 country, and produces resin in quantities. It is called 

 the northern, while Palustris and Ponderosa are 

 called respectively the southern and western Pitch 

 Pines. 



