972, ENGLISH BOTANY. 
secretion in any quantity. The way in which resin is obtained from the pinaster in 
France is described at length in Mr. Loudon’s arboretum. When the trees have attained 
the age of from twenty-five to thirty years, with trunks about four feet in cireumfer- 
ence, they are thought to have acquired sufficient strength to bear the extraction of 
their sap. The résinier (which is the name given to the person who collects the resin) 
usually tests the tree by putting his arm round it, and if the trunk is so thick that he 
cannot see his fingers on the other side, he considers the tree of sufficient size for him 
to commence his operations. A wound is made in the lower part of the trunk, and a 
small trough attached to it, through which the fluid resin flows into a reservoir. 
Every week the wound requires reopening and slightly increasing, and one man is 
expected to manage from 1,500 to 2,000 trees. The operation is continued annually 
on the same tree by removing a portion of the bark till the part laid bare is from twelve 
to fifteen feet in height, which takes place in seven or eight years. To procure tar, 
the wood of the tree is burned, and during this process lampblack is formed on the 
cover of the furnace ; but a superior kind is made from the straw, é&c., used in straining 
the resin, which is burned for the sole purpose of obtaining this pigment. Turpentine 
is rarely made from the pinaster, as it is very inferior to that produced from the silver 
fir, though recently, when the ports of the Southern States of America were blockaded, 
the bulk of the turpentine used in this country was from the pinaster. There are 
many other species of pine not naturalised in this country, though extensively culti- 
vated. The Stone Pine, P. pinea, a native of Southern Europe and the Levant, is one 
of the species of which the seeds are eaten. They are called Pignons by the French, 
Pinocchi by the Italians, and are commonly eaten for dessert, and made into sweet- 
meats. Several other species also yield eatable seeds, such as P. Sabiniana, the seeds 
of which are collected in immense quantities by the Californian and Oregon Indians 
as an article of winter food. The Firs, distinguished generally from the Pines as 
belonging to the genus Abies, but greatly resembling them, yield the same products, 
but are none of them British natives. The common Norway spruce fir, A. excelsa, 
yields a resin known as frankincense, which, when melted in water and strained, 
becomes Burgundy pitch. The young leaf-buds or shoots are boiled down in water 
to form essence of spruce, from which spruce beer is made; and its timber is much 
used under the name of white deal. A. picea, the silver fir, yields the finest turpen- 
tine; and A. lariz is the common Larch Fir, the wood of which is much prized, and is 
very durable. 
Spup-OrpEer I].—CUPRESSIN EA. 
Male flowers in catkins. Female flowers few, in a small catkin, 
consisting of scales on which the ovules are borne, the apex or opening 
of the ovule superior, the scales not in the axil of bracts. Fruit a small 
cone, with woody or leathery scales, or of 3 to 6 fleshy scales, cohering 
and forming a false drupe or berry. 
GENUS IL—JUNIPERUS. Linn. 
Flowers diccious, or rarely monecious on different branches of 
‘the same plant. Male flowers in minute globular solitary axillary 
