36 THE PINE. 



longevity, or a corresponding massiveness of trunk 

 and although the number of different species is 

 comparatively small, no trees form forests of extent 

 so vast, or of composition so exclusive. Linnaeus 

 gave to the palm-trees of the tropics the happy 

 name of the " princes of vegetable nature : " he 

 might, with still greater propriety, have termed the 

 palms the vegetable princes of hot countries ; the 

 pines and firs and their allies, the princes of cold 

 ones. For while exogenous or branching trees are 

 diffused over the whole world, and are found under 

 every variety of climate except the extreme frigid, 

 where no life can endure, palm-trees, on the one 

 hand, are restricted within certain parallels of 

 latitude, decreasing the further we depart from the 

 equinoctial; and pine and fir-trees, on the other 

 hand, belong emphatically to cold and temperate 

 countries. 



Not that either of these great races is without 

 example where the other prevails. Far from it. 

 There are palms even in the south of Europe, 

 where they form an attractive novelty to the 

 English visitor, especially to one seeking those 

 portions of the Mediterranean coast of France 

 which are the winter resort of invalids ; and ano- 

 ther kind, indigenous to the cooler parts of China, 

 appears to be hardy enough to bear English Christ- 

 mas weather without protection, being already an 

 ornament of many a lawn. Similarly, there are 



