THE SCOTS PINE 57 



The Little Firs — the self-sown Firs — that yet in days to be, 

 Shall lift plumed heads against the sky — 

 Shall stretch red, slender trunks on high — 

 Shall stand, each one a Forest Tree. 



If all the people in Great Britain, who only knew 

 one tree in the world by sight, in and out of season, 

 and were, under penalty, enforced to sally forth, 

 point out, and give a name to that tree which of all 

 others they knew best, some 90 per cent., w^e think, 

 would pitch upon the P. Sylvestris, and in so doing 

 they would probably w^hen they spoke of it — as did 

 the poet Mason — employ the misnomer Scotch Fir, 

 in direct defiance of all Scotsmen's susceptibilities 

 and all arboricultural authorities, who very properly 

 have impressed us with the desirability of alluding 

 to it as the Scots Pine. It is a tree that, if we were 

 to write about at length, we could not say too much 

 in its praise and honour, and it is a tree that if we 

 were to try and explain we could not say too little, 

 for there is no need to hammer on at that which we 

 all are aware is driven home. 



We could not, in our desire to give it glorification, 

 rise to the height of the occasion, and we could not, 

 if we tried, hope to reach to the depth of its historical 

 antiquity with us. 



It is too well known and appreciated by all to 

 need further dissertation upon here. 



The name implies its origin, and the whereabouts 

 of its localities of its native heath. 



From the forests and Highlands, 

 We come, we come, 



once wrote Shelley, and these w^ords tell the tale of 

 their indigenous home. 



