THE PINE. 41 



ness of rose and lily is entirely wanting ; even the 

 plain coverings of a grass-blossom are not to be 

 found ; Nature seems to have taken pleasure . in 

 showing how, with the utmost stateliness of figure, 

 could be associated the last extreme of incomplete- 

 ness as to flowers. The stamens make their ap- 

 pearance either in little sheaves along the branches, 

 as in the larch-tree, or in clusters that seem moun- 

 tains of such sheaves; the pistils are developed in 

 connection with the rudiments of those elegant and 

 familiar productions known as fir-cones ; not how- 

 ever, as in other plants, in the form of a closed 

 ovary, but as flat scales, with the ovules lying at 

 the base ; and when the time arrives for the pollen 

 to be conveyed to the ovules, it is transmitted, not 

 through a stigma and style, but immediately. The 

 pollen gone, the stamens wither away and fall to the 

 ground ; the clusters of ovules, with their protecting 

 scales, undergo changes similar to those of ripening 

 fruits, and in due time we get the cone, now a hard 

 and solid body, and oftentimes more like the work 

 of the wood-carver than the produce of a tree. The 

 variety in these cones is most wonderful. We see 

 in it once more how amazing is the ingenuity that, 

 dealing with a simple idea, apparently susceptible 

 of no modification, shall nevertheless play upon it 

 as a musician upon his lute, and strike us the more 

 by displaying resources where and when least ex- 

 pected. The pieces of which the cone is composed 



