234 PINUS, OR 



long, spreading, and of an ashy-gray colour. Branchlets slender 

 and rather smooth. Cones terminal, very numerous, and either 

 solitary or in sub- vertical clusters, on short, stout foot-stalks, 

 more or less pendent, and about one inch and a half long, 

 rounded at the base, and with the upper part regularly taper- 

 ing into a conical point. Scales of a linear-oblong shape, 

 slightly thickened along the upper part, rhomboid on the ex- 

 posed part, closely imbricated, small, and nearly all of an equal 

 size ; with a slender, elevated line across the middle of the 

 lozenge-shaped termination, and a little prickle in the centre, 

 which soon disappears. Seeds very small, with membranous 

 wings of a rusty-brown colour, regularly striated with reddish- 

 brown, and three times the length of the seed ; seed-leaves 

 short and mostly in sixes. It forms a tree forty feet high, with 

 a cylindrical stem covered with a smooth bark, of an ashy-gray 

 colour, and, according to Professor Zuccarini, is found all over 

 Japan, but is most rare in the southern provinces, where it is gene- 

 rally cultivated. In the middle part of the empire it is planted 

 in masses, and forms vast woods, along with Pinus Massoniana, 

 which it very much resembles. In the south, near Nagasaki, 

 only a few solitary specimens are seen, generally forty feet or 

 more high, while in the more northern parts it is very abundant, 

 especially on the mountain slopes to a height of from 1000 to 

 2000 feet of elevation. It also occurs at the bottom of valleys, 

 and on the road from Ohosaka to Yeddo, where there are large 

 thickets of it, and Pinus Massoniana, standing above the 

 marshy rice-fields ; the latter species is, however, more es- 

 pecially a valley plant, becoming a mere bush at a height of 

 3500 feet above the sea. The timber is of great excellence : 

 and its resin is largely in request for the plasters and salves 

 used by the Japanese in healing wounds and sores. In pul- 

 monary complaints they also hold it to be a specific, and make 

 India and China ink from the soot of both Pinus densiHora 

 and P. Massoniana. 



The Japanese call this Fir "Me-Matsu" (female Pine) on 

 account of its producing such an abundance of its little cones 



