TREES GROWING IN RICH SOIL. 225 



The dark, yellowish wood of the blue ash is valuable. It is 

 not very strong, but hard, and is adaptable for such purposes as 

 flooring and parts of carriages. Commercially, it is not distin- 

 guished from the other ashes of the northern and middle states. 

 From its inner bark a blue dye is extracted and to this cir* 

 cumstance is owing the tree's common name. 



WHITE PINE. WEYMOUTH PINE. {Plate CXXI.) 



Plnus Strbbus. 



FAMILY SHAPE HEIGHT RANGE TIME OF BLOOM 



Pine. Conical: branches, 80-175 feet. Northward to Great June. 



whorled horizontally. Lakes, southward to Fruit: Sept. 



Georgia and Iowa. 



Bark : light greenish grey; smooth on young trunks and branches, and be- 

 coming rough and brownish with age. Leaves : three to five inches long; sim- 

 ple; arranged closely along the branches in clusters of five, and having short 

 sheaths which fall early; needle-shaped; three-sided; light green; soft; deli- 

 cate; glaucous. Cones : reddish brown; four to six inches long; terminal; soli- 

 tary; drooping; cylindrical; slightly curved; resinous. Scales: thin; blunt. 

 Seeds : winged. 



The tragrance of balsam, the greenness of hope seem to 

 come to us with the very name of a pine; but there are few among 

 them that can claim as much admiration as the white pine. 

 Much of the peculiar charm which distinguishes our scenery 

 from that of other lands is owing to its great whorled branches 

 which regularly stand out against the sky. Throughout the 

 winter how magnificent is this living creature of the forest, 

 when it stretches out its arms to uphold the snow and ice that 

 bend them without mercy to the ground. And how must it be 

 thrilled with delight as it is touched with the soft air of spring 

 which lovingly dries its needles by fanning them in its breezes. 

 Then as the silver sheen of their undersides passes through the 

 hazy blue tone of its green, Thoreau describes the effect as 

 similar to that of cold flashes of electric light. 



It is interesting to reflect that during the latter part of the 

 XVIIth century all silver shillings and smaller coins that were 

 struck in the colony of Massachusetts bore the device of a 

 white pine. Also in 1772, a clause in extenuation to one in the 

 charter of Massachusetts Bay read : " That after September 21, 



