384 PINUS PINASTER. 



unequal lengths and diameters, and the head bears a close 

 resemblance to that described below as characterising the 

 Stone Pine, except that it does not spread so widely. The 

 roots are few in number, but unusually stout, and instead 

 of extending themselves laterally, as is the case with most 

 of the Fir tribe, they descend almost perpendicularly. 

 Consequently, the Pinaster does not nourish on a thin soil, 

 but delights in a dry and sandy situation. 



The Pinaster inhabits a wide range of country, being 

 found in the south of Europe, the north of Africa, and 

 the west of Asia ; it is also said to grow on the Himalayan 

 mountains. Great use has been made of this tree in the 

 south of France, in fixing the shifting surface of the sand- 

 hills, and even in turning the waste land which they 

 occupied to profitable account. In the neighbourhood of 

 the Gulf of Gascony alone there were, in 1789, no less 

 than three hundred square miles rendered worse than 

 useless by innumerable naked sandhills, which were con- 

 stantly altering their position, and on the occurrence of 

 storms having their surface blown inland, to the great 

 detriment of the cultivated lands. The remedy proposed 

 by M. Bremontier was to erect a fence of hurdles so as to 

 front the prevailing wind, and to sow within this a belt of 

 Pinaster-seeds mixed with those of the Yellow Broom. 

 At a short distance within this were sown a second and 

 a third belt, till the whole was covered. The ground was 

 then, as it were, roughly thatched with hundreds of trees, 

 reeds, or seaweed. Thus protected, the seeds sprung up, 

 the Broom at first outstripping its companion and affording * 

 it shelter. In the course of seven or eight years it was 

 found that the Pinaster began to choke its foster-nurse, 

 which quietly submitted and gave up its decaying leaves 

 and twigs to the fertilization of the soil. 



In about ten or twelve years the plantations were 

 thinned, the branches being applied to the sheltering of 

 ground not hitherto enclosed, and the trunks being burned 

 to make tar. When about twenty or thirty years of age 



