THE SCOTCH FIE, OR PINE. 365 



troop. A well-supplied boiler is at work night and day 

 in a kitchen built on the raft. The dinner-hour is an- 

 nounced by a basket stuck on a pole, at which signal the 

 pilots give the word of command, and the workmen run 

 from all quarters to receive their rations. The consumption 

 of provisions is enormous ; forty or fifty thousand pounds 

 of bread, twenty thousand pounds of fresh meat, with a 

 proportionate quantity of butter, salt meat, vegetables, 

 &c., are demolished in the voyage from Andernach down 

 to Holland." 1 



THE SCOTCH FIR, OR PINE. 



PlNUS SYLVESTRIS. 



THE Scotch Fir is the only one which is a native of 

 Britain. Julius Cajsar, it has been remarked before, 2 

 states that the Beech and the kind of Fir which was 

 known to the Romans by the name of Abies were not to 

 be found in this island. With regard to the Beech, I have 

 endeavoured to show that he was in error ; but in the 

 other case he was probably correct, for the tree which the 

 Romans called Abies does not appear to be the same with 

 our Pine, but with what we call the Silver Fir, which was 

 not introduced into England until the beginning of the 

 seventeenth century. From remote antiquity, the Pine 

 has grown in the Highlands of Scotland, and the occa- 

 sional discovery of trunks of the same tree in peat-bogs 

 sufficiently proves that it was at one time indigenous to 

 England. Extensive and most magnificent forests of Pine 

 still exist in Scotland, exhibiting a character which belongs 

 to no British forests composed of other trees so peculiar 



1 " An Autumn near the Rhine." 2 P. 143. 



