518 EVERGREEN TREES AND SHRUBS. 



globular head ; which form, not being in harmony with the nature of 

 the tree, would do injustice to its beauty. To reduce its size and 

 add to the luxuriance of its foliage without varying too much from its 

 native form, and materially changing its expression, will be a pleas- 

 ant study for the amateur gardener. Not only, however, is the tree 

 capable of being improved in form and foliage by judicious prun- 

 ing, but it is so far docile to the hand of art that it may be reduced 

 even to hedge-limits, and will bear the shears or the pruning-knife 

 to shape it into other artificial forms of embellishment. 



Those who have seen the white pine as exposed in its native 

 forests, a bare and lofty black-barked trunk, with a monotonous 

 uniformity of meagre-foliaged branches in level whorls towards 

 its summit only, can with difficulty realize the graceful spread- 

 ing luxuriance of the tree in rich sandy open ground. The 

 foliage is a warm light-green, often with a bluish tinge. The 

 leaves, five in a sheath, are from three to four inches long, slender, 

 straight, soft to the touch, and delicately fragrant. They fall at the 

 end of their second summer, so that each summer the tree is 

 clothed with two years' foliage, while in winter it has only the pre- 

 ceding summer's leaves. The cones are from four to six inches 

 long, curved, cucumber-shaped, and drooping. The bark is dark, 

 smooth on young trees, and grows rough and darker with age. 



High winds are the greatest enemy of the white pine. Its wood 

 is not so tough as that of most deciduous trees. In winter the 

 foliage catches and holds the snow, which sometimes breaks the 

 branches by its weight alone, but oftener by the assistance of the 

 wind when they are thus loaded. Trees grown from the beginning 

 in places fully exposed to the wind will be more likely to resist 

 such strains, and become strong old trees, than those which have 

 grown up in sheltered places, or in too rich a soil. 



A warm, sandy soil, with a clay substratum, is the one in which 

 this pine is most at home, and its rate of growth (at the top) in 

 such soils, is about three feet a year. In stiff clays, or in cold, or 

 "clammy" soils, it does poorly, and has but little beauty. But by 

 deep drainage even these may be changed, so as to allow the 

 white pine to develop handsomely. 



There are a few very pretty dwarf varieties, as follows : 



