50 SOME PINES 



pine to the notice of those concerned. There is such 

 a bewildering variety to choose from, the ends of the 

 earth having been ransacked to furnish us with novelties, 

 that it takes half a lifetime to form any notion, however 

 imperfect, as to their relative worth. Two-and-thirty years 

 ago I returned from the Engadine delighted, as all tourists 

 must be, with the sturdy spires of the ' Aralla ' or Swiss 

 stone pine (Pinus cembra), and of this species I straight- 

 way ordered some from a nurseryman. Now the Aralla 

 is a tree of very deliberate growth ; twenty feet in thirty 

 years is its utmost speed, fifteen feet is what may be 

 looked for. The young plants which I purchased 

 resembled the Aralla in foliage, but they behaved as no 

 tree of that species ever did. Eighteen inches a year 

 they shot up with utmost regularity, and it was not till 

 they were far above my head that I found they were not 

 Arallas at all, but natives of a different continent. They 

 were Pinus Tnonticola from northern California, where 

 they grow to a height of one hundred feet and more, 

 producing white, fine-grained, and tough deal. They 

 resemble the Weymouth pine; in fact Nuttall classified 

 them as a mountain variety of that species ; but in every 

 respect they are far nobler trees than the Weymouth, of 

 fine, boldly columnar growth, and without the Wey- 

 mouth's tendency to send up many leaders. The 

 Weymouth dislikes our western seaboard ; but there 

 stand the Monticolas, sixty feet high in thirty-two years, 

 defying the Atlantic gales, and I wish I had a hundred 

 acres planted with nothing else. 1 



1 At Murthly and elsewhere, I am told, Pinus monticola has succumbed 

 to disease, profusely bleeding from stem and branches, but there are no 

 signs of ill-health in my trees. 



