CONE-BEARERS. 87 



The Thin-Bark, Tamarack Pines 



Are the unfortunate, assaulted and impoverished 

 members of the Pine family. Knocked about on the 

 bleak, sub-alpine heights, their limbs attacked by a 

 mistletoe of their own nurturing, which circles and 

 kills the branches; or by a mysterious agent which 

 causes the branches to turn into close coils, clogging 

 the sap and eventually killing the tree; their trunks, 

 meanwhile, attenuated and thin-barked, are attacked 

 at every stage by tree-boring larvae and bark-eating 

 birds causing pitch to stream from their wrinkled 

 countenances like Niobe's tears, appealing to man for 

 pity. It is interesting to note in this connection, that 

 we derive our most sympathetic of English words, 

 pity, from the Greek's name for the pine tree Pitys 

 in allusion to this weeping, pitch-yielding character 

 of the pine trees. 



The Broken- Cone, Lumber Pines 



Comprise the profuse, cosmopolitan utilitarians of the 

 family of pines. With forms innumerable and indi- 

 viduals widely distributed, they have developed the 

 most adaptable and useful qualities, both in behalf of 

 Mother Nature, in clothing with forests large sections 

 of country, and of man, in furnishing most valuable 

 and procurable lumber and fuel-producing factors of 

 civilization. 



