24 TTTE PINE. 



called on account of that peninsula resembling in its outline the leaf of 

 the mulberry-tree, Morns nigra; and "Buckinghamshire," as signifying 

 the home of the beech-trees, "beech" being only another spelling of 

 the older Teutonic name, buck, or buch. 



As we are made best acquainted with it, the Scotch pine is generally 

 found in great platoons, or used almost alone for large plantations. 

 Sometimes it is mingled with others of its race ; frequently it is the only 

 tree over an area of miles in extent. Whether formed of this tree alone, 

 or of conifers in variety, a pine-wood is one of the most imposing scenes 

 in nature. It is totally different from a forest of trees such as oaks. 

 The latter kinds of trees are deciduous. Not so the conifers. These, 

 excepting the larch, preserve their foliage all the year round, changing 

 the leaves season by season, after the manner of plants in general, but 

 still, for ever and always, dressed in perennial green. At two seasons 

 of the year, the conifers, like other trees, show a difference in their 

 complexion ; namely, in spring, when the new shoots start forwards, 

 oftentimes in elegant horizontal sprays, like the hands of a strong 

 swimmer put forth for the new stroke ; or lifted on high, like plumes of 

 green hair ; they are remarkable again in late autumn, especially in 

 the case of the Scotch pine, when other trees are fast becoming dis- 

 mantled. For at this season, in the gloom of November, often indeed 

 in October, when the ground is strewed with the earliest-fallen leaves of 

 the ash and the sycamore, the Scotch pine also casts its older leaves ; 

 and the new ones, developed during the summer that is now a memory, 

 no longer clouded by the dark and brownish hue of the departing ones, 

 shine with a beautiful lustre we do not observe except at this moment. 

 In a word, Scotch firs usually look best at the close of autumn. With 

 the evergreen character of the tree is to be associated, if we would 

 rightly understand the pine-forest, the remarkable uprightness and 

 straightness of the trunks, and generally speaking, the symmetry and 

 mathematical precision of the branches. The Scotch pine is less 

 remarkable in this respect than many others ; they are; nevertheless, 

 features in which it shares. A coniferous tree is never found 

 accommodating itself to the surface of broken ground. The branches 

 never hang themselves over a waterfall or a ravine. They refuse to 

 receive impressions from surrounding conditions, maintaining their 

 own peculiar and inflexible direction. On a mountain-side, we may 

 notice, even as we rush past in a railway-carriage, the stiff and erect 

 green pyramids, every tree the exact counterpart of every other, and 

 the stems as straight as the columns of an ancient temple. Go into 



