BOOK XVI. XXIII. 59-xxiv. 62 



shady places has a rougher appearance, and presents 

 an offensive odour ; and pitch in a cold winter is 

 inferior in quahty and less plentiful in quantity, 

 and of a bad colour. Some people think that the 

 hquid obtained in mountain regions is superior in 

 quantity and colour and sweeter, and also has a 

 more agreeable smell, so long as it remains in the 

 state of resin, but that when boiled down it yields 

 less pitch, because it goes off into a watery residue, 

 and that the trees themselves are thinner than those 

 in the plains, but that both the one and the other 

 kinds are less productive in dry weather. Some 

 trees yield a hberal supply in the year after they 

 are cut, whereas others do so a year later and some 

 two years later. The wound fills up with resin, 

 not with bark or by a scab, as in this tree an incision 

 in the bark does not join up. 



Among these classes of trees some people have 

 made a special variety of the sappinus fir, because 

 under the name of this group of trees is grown the 

 kind which we described among the nut-bearing xv. 36. 

 kinds ; and the lowest parts of the same tree are 

 called pine-torches, although the tree in question is 

 really only a pitch-pine with its wild character a 

 httle modified by cultivation, whereas the sappinus 

 is a timber produced by the mode of feUing used, as 

 we shall explain. § 196. 



XXIV. For it is for the sake of their timber that Theash: 

 Nature has created the rest of the trees, and the El/S 

 most productive of them all, the ash. This is a'^^^"- 

 lofty, shapely tree, itself also having feathery foh- 

 age, and has been rendered extremely famous by 

 the advertisement given it by Homer*^ as supplying 

 the spear of Achilles. The wood of the ash is useful 



427 



