THE PINE. 45 



The latter kinds of trees are deciduous. Not so the 

 conifers. These, excepting the larch, preserve their 

 foliage all the year round, of course periodically- 

 casting the dead leaves, after the manner of plants 

 in general, but still, for ever and always continuing 

 dressed in 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 hori- 

 zontal sprays, like the hands of a strong swimmer 

 put forth for the new stroke j 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 dismantled. 

 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 

 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 under- 

 stand 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 



