THE SCOTCH FIR, OR PINE. 375 



any other wood for making washing-tubs, axles of mill- 

 wheels, &c. 



The range of the Pine is very extensive ; it is to be met 

 with throughout the greater part of Europe, from the 

 Mediterranean to Norway, varying in elevation from seven 

 hundred to nearly four thousand feet, in favourable situa- 

 tions attaining a height of a hundred feet or more, with a 

 trunk upwards of four feet in diameter, and dwindling as 

 it ascends the mountains to a mere bush. A variety is 

 said to grow at Nootka Sound in North America, and it is 

 found also in Siberia, Karnschatka, Caucasus, and Japan. 

 There are immense forests of it on the table-lands of 

 Russia, and on most of the mountain-ranges of Europe, as 

 far south as the Pyrenees. The seeds are sometimes 

 carried by the wind from these latter situations to marshy 

 places and peat-bogs ; but here, though the seeds ger- 

 minate, the trees are always stunted in growth, and soon 

 sicken and die. The finest specimens grow in a dry soil, 

 and it has been remarked that in native forests the roots 

 run along the surface, and even rise above it, and the tree 

 seems to derive a great part of its nourishment from the 

 black vegetable mould formed by the decay of its own 

 leaves. The trunk is generally straight, and covered with 

 a scaly bark of a reddish hue. The leaves grow in pairs, 

 sheathed at the base, from two to three inches in length 

 on young trees, but in old trees they are much shorter. 

 They are convex on one side, and nearly flat on the other, 

 so that when pressed together they form a cylinder ; 

 the edges are minutely notched, and the colour is a light 

 blueish green, especially beneath, or on the convex surface. 

 They remain attached to the tree four years, and, long 

 before this, exchange the glaucous hue for a dark green. 

 The flowers appear in May and June, the barren ones 

 arranged in whorls around the extremities of the last 

 year's shoots, and producing pollen in great abundance. 

 The fertile catkins grow most frequently in pairs at the 

 summit of the new shoots, and gradually assume the 



