18. POPULUS GRAHDIDENTATA ASPEK. 67 



this country affords. It is not liable to shrink, and would be valuable 

 for inside finishing, for which use it is sometimes employed. It is used 

 to considerable extent in turned-work and smaller wooden-ware generally. 

 A clothes-pin manufacturer in northern New York tells us that he con- 

 siders the Poplar as the best timber for his use. It enters largely into 

 the manufacture of tooth-picks and excelsior, but its principal use might 

 be said to be in the manufacture of wood-pulp for paper, and for this 

 it is of highest value, being considered, perhaps, second to none in 

 importance. 



" When, in the time of our grandmothers, fashion required that a lady 

 should seem somewhat taller than nature made her, the light wood of 

 this poplar was in demand as best adapted for the substance of the high 

 heels of their shoes, and the manufacture constituted a distinct trade. 

 The more substantial heels of the shoes of the lower people were made 

 of more durable and heavier maple. The wood was also extensively 

 used in the manufacture of hats before the palm-leaf was introduced/' * 



MEDICINAL PROPERTIES. None are recorded for this species. 



GYMNOSPERM^E. 



Flowering, exogenous plants with leaves chiefly parallel-veined and 

 cotyledons frequently more than two. Flowers diclinous and very 

 incomplete; pistil represented by an open scale or leaf, or altogether 

 wanting, with ovules naked, fertilized by direct cdntact with the pollen, 

 and seeds at maturity naked without a true pericarp. 



ORDER CONIFER JE: PINE FAMILY. 



Leaves mostly awl-shaped or needle-shaped, evergreen, entire and parallel -veined. 

 Flowers monoecious, or rarely dioecious, in catkins or cones, destitute of both calyx 

 and corolla; stamens one or several (usually united); ovary, style and stigma want- 

 ing; ovules one or several at the base of a scale, which serves as a carpel, or on an 

 open disk. Fruit a cone, woody and with distinct scales, or somewhat berry-like, and 

 with fleshy coherent scales; seeds orthotropous, embryo in the axis of the albumen. 



Trees or shrubs with a resinous juice. 



GENUS PINUS, TOURN. 



Leaves evergreen, needle-shaped, from slender buds, in clusters of 2-5 together, 

 each clucter invested at its base with a sheath of thin, membranous scales. Flowers 

 appearing in spring, monoecious. Sterile flowers in catkins, clustered at the base of 

 the shoots of the season; stamens numerous with very short filaments and a scale-like 

 connective; anther cells, 2, opening lengthwise; pollen grains triple. Fertile flowers 

 in conical or cylindrical spikes cones consisting of imbricated, carpellary scales, 

 each in the axil of a persistent bract and bearing at its base within a pair of inverted 

 ovules. Fruit maturing in the autumn of the second year, a cone formed of the 

 imbricated carpellary scales, which are woody, often thickened or awned at the apex, 

 persistent, when ripe dry and spreading to liberate the two nut-like winged seeds; 

 cotyledons 3-12, linear. * 



(Pinus is a Latin word from Celtic pin or pen, a crag.) 



* The Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts, by Geo. B. Emerson, 2d ed., p. 279. 



