TREES IN NATURE 113 



serve the word beautiful for buildings that are 

 fine examples of the builder s art. Anyhow, 

 the stone pine is certainly picturesque, with its 

 deeply fissured, thick-set, reddish stem ; its wide- 

 st retching arms bearing plume-like tufts of rich 

 green foliage. Not the least valuable of its 

 qualities, in a hot country, both to the artist and 

 to mankind in general, is the welcome shade 

 it affords. The suggestion of shade is pleasant 

 in a sunny picture ; it is more than pleasant in 

 the reality of southern sunshine. The stone 

 pine is one of nature's sunshades, and the form 

 of our artificial ones might have been suggested 

 by it. 



In Modern Painters Ruskin mentions to- 

 gether *'the spire of the cypress, and flaked 

 breadth of the cedar, the rounded head of 

 the stone pine, and perfect pyramid of the 

 black spruce ". The spruce has already been 

 mentioned here. Ruskin calls it a pine, which 

 is a mistake according to strict botanical 

 classification. In art it is made familiar to 

 us by pictures of mountain, particularly Swiss, 

 scenery ; and it appealed strongly to Turner s 

 keen interest in the struggle of trees to main- 

 tain themselves under adverse conditions. Of 

 8 



