2124 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 



mansions are paved with pieces of the trunk of about 18 in. in length, set side 

 by side, and beaten down till they form a level surface, in the same way as is 

 done when stones are used for a 

 similar purpose. This wood, from 

 the quantity of resinous matter 

 which it contains, is very com- 

 bustible, and makes excellent fuel ; 

 and, in the Highlands of Scot- 

 land, splinters of it were formerly 

 used as a substitute for candles ; as 



they still are in some parts of Ire- 2008 



land, and in Sweden, Norway, Russia, and some parts of North America. In the 

 latter country, according to Michaux, the inhabitants, in some parts of the in- 

 terior, split the red wood of the pine into pieces about the thickness of a finger, 

 which they call candle wood, and burn instead of candles ; but, on account 

 of the disagreeable black smoke which these pine candles produce, they are ge- 

 nerally burned in the chimney corner, upon a flat stone or iron. The branches, 

 more especially those of the genera ^bies and Pfcea, from their frond-like 

 forms, are well adapted for protecting plants during winter, either in the open 

 ground, or trained against walls. In Switzerland and Norway, they are used 

 as food for cattle. The roots, and also the trunks, produce turpentine, resin, 

 tar, pitch, and lampblack. The bark of the larch, and of several other 

 species, is, or may be, used in tanning. P. Pinea affords a kernel which 

 is valued for the dessert in Italy and Greece ; the kernel of P. Cembra 

 is equally prized in some parts of Switzerland. P. Lambertzn not only 

 affords eatable nuts, but a substance which is used by the natives of California 

 as sugar. The kernels of the araucarias are highly prized as food in Brazil ; 

 and, doubtless, those of most of the other species might be eaten, if freed 

 from their resinous matter by roasting. A decoction of the tops of the spruce 

 fir is employed for flavouring spruce beer ; and from the inner bark, dried 

 and ground, a kind of meal is produced, which, in the north of Europe, in 

 times of scarcity, is mixed with that of rye and oats, and made into bread. 

 The cones of pines and firs, thrown into wine or beer, have a tendency to 

 check fermentation, and also to communicate an agreeable resinous flavour. 

 The larch exudes a glutinous matter, which, in some countries, is collected 

 by the natives, and used as a substitute for manna ; and the same tree pro- 

 duces a fungus which is used medicinally in Siberia. The more hardy kinds 

 of the pine and fir tribe are much valued in plantations as a shelter to others 

 of a more tender kind ; more especially the oak, which, as we have seen 

 p. 1803., is protected in the government plantations, even in the south of 

 England, for a number of years, by the Scotch pine. Few trees are so 

 well adapted as the pine and fir tribe for covering immense tracts of barren, 

 or even drifting, sands, with wood ; either by directly sowing the seeds on 

 the sand ; or by sowing them among plants of broom or creeping grasses pre- 

 viously raised on drifting surfaces, in order to fix the sand and shelter the 

 young pines. This practice has been carried to a great extent in France, 

 on the shores of the Gulf of Gascony; where it was commenced in 1789, by 

 Bremontier, an engineer connected with the national forests and waste 

 lands of France. (See De Candolle's Physiologic Vegetate, torn. iii. p. 1236., 

 and the history of P. Pinaster, in a future page.) Wherever waste ground 

 is covered with heath alone, a forest of pines may easily be created by merely 

 sowing the seeds among the heath. This is a remarkably simple mode of 

 raising a forest of trees, but it scarcely applies to ground covered with any 

 other description of herbage than heath, or to any other kinds of timber 

 trees than those of the pine and fir tribe, and the birch. The poplar and the 

 willow might be treated in the same manner, but the seeds of these can 

 seldom be procured in sufficient quantity. 



The most useful species of ^bietinae, at least in Europe, in the existing 

 state of the pine and fir forests, and of arboriculture, is unquestionably the 



