THE PINE. 425 



is white, soft, without resin, and perishable ; in others 

 it is firm, resinous, red-coloured, and durable ; it therefore 

 becomes a matter of the first importance to the planter 

 that the nurserymen from whom he procures his trees 

 should be very particular in the selection of this seed, 

 and that the people he employs to collect the cones should 

 have directions as to the trees from which they ought to 

 be gathered. This, indeed, becomes the more necessary, 

 as the inferior variety produces cones much more freely 

 than the other, and when no restriction is enforced or 

 particular directions given it is natural to suppose that 

 the seed-gatherer, when paid for quantity and not for 

 quality, will collect the cones from trees on which they 

 are most abundant and can be most easily procured. It 

 is from this inattention to the collecting of Pine seed, 

 that the introduction of the inferior variety in so large a 

 proportion as compared with the better kind in so many 

 Pine plantations may be attributed, and not, as Sir Walter 

 Scott mistakingly supposed, to the introduction of an in- 

 ferior variety from Canada, in which country, and other 

 parts of North America, the Pinus sylvestris is not an 

 indigenous tree, and from whence no seed could be ob- 

 tained. The three principal varieties of the Pinus sylves- 

 tris in this kingdom were first accurately described by 

 Mr. Don of Forfar, in a memoir published in the first 

 volume of the Caledonian Horticultural Society. The 

 first, to which he gives the title of Pinus sylv. vulgaris, 

 Common Wild Pine, is distinguished by its close pyramidal 

 head, the branches growing upwards at an acute angle 

 with the trunk, the leaves marginated and of a dark 

 green, without any glaucous appearance beneath, and the 

 bark of the trunk very rugged. This variety, he remarks, 

 seems to be but short-lived, becoming soon stunted in 



