40 HOUGH'S AMERICAN WOODS. 



shores, etc. It is particularly abundant along the streams of the western 

 plains. 



PHYSICAL PROPERTIES. Wood very light, soft, close-grained and not 

 strong, of a brownish color, with very thick, nearly white, sap-wood. 

 Specific Gravity, 0.3889; Percentage of Ash, 0.96; Relative Approxi- 

 mate Fuel Value, 0.3852; Coefficient of Elasticity, 99417 ; Modulus of 

 Rupture, 770 ; Resistance to Longitudinal Pressure, 353 ; Resistance to 

 Indentation, 83; Weight of a Cubic Foot in Pounds, 24.24. 



USES. A timber used to some extent for cutter dashes, light boxes, 

 etc., but is particularly valuable for paper pulp owing to its long cottony 

 fibre. 



MEDICINAL PROPERTIES. None are ascribed to this species, though 

 those mentioned of the Balsam Poplar would probably be found to be 

 true of this also. 



NOTE. We have seen on Rev. Dr. J.Jones' grounds at Aurora, N. Y., 

 a fine tree of this species measuring eight feet in diameter at base. It 

 has a full and very wide-spreading top, though not very great height, and 

 is certainly a magnificent tree. 



GYMNOSPERM^E. 



Flowering, exogenous plants with leaves chiefly parallel-veined and 

 cotyledons frequently more than two. Floivers diclinous and very in- 

 complete; pistil represented by an open scale or leaf, or altogether want- 

 ing, with ovules naked, fertilized by direct contact with the pollen, and 

 seeds at maturity naked without a true pericarp. 



ORDER OONIFERJE: PINE FAMILY. 



Leaves mostly awl-sliaped 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 tlie 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 orthotrouous, embryo in the axis of the albumen. 



Trees or shrubs with a resinous j uice. 



GENUS PINUS, TOURN. 



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

 each cluster invested at its base with a sheath of thin, membraneous 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.) 



