where he then had his abode. Boreas, the god of the north wind, became a 

 rival of Pan and, in a fit of anger, blew the nymph down from a high precipice. 

 Pan saw her falling and though unable to save her life changed her form to 

 that of a pine tree. From that time pine trees have been seen clinging to rocky 

 mountain sides and growing in the exposed places of the earth. 



The stone pine is a conspicuous feature in the landscape of Rome, and a 

 favorite with artists, who use its massive head in their Italian scenes as a foil 

 to the limpid azure of the sky. Pliny describes the great eruption of Vesuvius 

 in A. D. 79 and compares the form of the stone pine to the mass of smoke 

 which arose from the volcano. Just as the mingled steam and dust arose from 

 the crater in a vertical column and then spread laterally on all sides, so does 

 the stone pine rise unbranched to a considerable height and then send out 

 its branches in a more or less flat mass at the summit. 



In Pliny's time the nuts of the stone pine were preserved in honey, and are 

 now commonly used as food. On the islands in the sea of Marmora, where 

 the tree is common, the cones are exposed to fire to make them open and drop 

 out their seeds, which are known in Turkish as "fistils." The French call the 

 seed "pignons." It is from the bony shell in which the seed is enclosed that 

 the tree derives its name. 



The stone pine has a trunk covered with rugged, deep fissured, thick 

 red-gray bark. It forks at a short distance from the ground and sends out 

 massive, spreading branches of great length which form a flat and round 

 topped crown. The shiny green needles, which are quite long, together with 

 the unique umbrella-shaped crown afford a valuable aid to landscape planting. 

 Excellent specimens are to be seen in the Capitol Park at Sacramento. In its 

 native land the stone pine attains a height of about seventy-five feet, but in 

 this state the finest specimens do not exceed fifty feet in height. It is mod- 

 erately long lived and is hardy in regions where there are no heavy frosts. 



AUSTRIAN PINE 



The Austrian pine (Pinus laricio austriaca) is a robust hardy, spreading 

 tree with stout, blunt branches and rich glossy, dark-green foliage. It is a 

 variety of the Corsican pine which is a native of southern Europe and which 

 was adopted in 1788 for masts for the French navy. 



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