CONIFER. Daal 
Naturalised in the Poole basin. Formerly a native of Ireland, and 
possibly a few plants still exist in the neighbourhood of Tarbert, 
Kerry. 
[England,] Ireland (?). Tree. Early Summer. 
A sturdy tree, with reddish-piceous rather even bark in layerlike 
flakes. Branches very stout, much more so than in the Scotch fir, 
and with larger scars, with the reflexed points (as long as they 
remain) much more prominent. Leaves 3 to 8 inches long, thicker 
and more deeply channeled than in P. sylvestris, surrounded by 
reddish ash-coloured scales, the margins bound together by numerous 
slender filaments. Cones 4 to 6 inches long, liver-colour; escutcheon 
of the largest scales about an inch across the transverse diameter 
by 3 across that in a line with the longitudinal axis of the cone, 
Seeds, including the wing, about 1} inch long; the solid part fuscous, 
and nearly 4 inch long. 
I am indebted to Dr. Falls, of Bournemouth, for fresh specimens of 
the plant, which is completely naturalised in that neighbourhood. 
Cluster Pine. 
French, Pin maritime. 
This is a beautiful tree, with much longer and brighter coloured leaves than the 
Scotch pine, and with larger cones arranged in clusters around the branches, and the 
scales ending in a rigid point. It grows best in deep loose soils, throwing down long 
tap roots that take hold even in the lightest soils, so that it can flourish even in the 
drifting sands of the sea-shore. Great use has been made of it in France in covering 
immense districts of barren sands. Around the Bay of Biscay large plantations of 
this pine have been formed to protect the land from the drifting sand which threatened 
to convert it into a desert. The downs around the Gulf of Gascony were at one time 
mere sandy wastes covering 300 square miles. Bremontier compared this immense 
surface to a sea which, when agitated to fury by a tempest of wind, overwhelmed 
everything in its neighbourhood. By sowing this tract of sand with the seeds of the 
pinaster mixed with those of the common broom, its whole nature has been changed. 
The seeds were sown behind rows of hurdles, and the broom, growing up quickly, 
protects the young pines from being rooted up or smothered by the sand. In 181] a 
Commission appointed by the French Government made a report on the downs, and 
announced that about 12,500 acres of downs had been covered with thriving planta- 
tions, constituting the principal riches of the inhabitants, who are <lmost entirely 
supported by the preparation of resin and tar from the pinaster forests. Though the 
wood of the pinaster is soft and not of long duration, it is employed in the marine 
arsenal at Toulon for the outer cases of all the packages which are put on board 
vessels, and principally for the piles and props which are used for sustaining the 
frames of vessels while they are being constructed. In Bordeaux and in Provence 
it is employed for the common kinds of carpentry, for packing-boxes, and for fuel, but 
the most valuable purposes to which the tree is applied is the production of tar, resin, 
and lampblack. The manufacture and collecting of these substances forms a very 
active business in climates where the trees attain perfection. In Britain it would not 
be profitable to attempt it, as our summers are not sufliciently hot to produce the 
