504 OUR WOODLAND TREES. 
its kind, and it is owing to this circumstance that 
the weight of its foliage often bends it to one 
side. It is a rapid grower, thriving well in sandy 
soils near the sea, whose influence—injurious to 
many other Trees—it can withstand unharmed. 
Introduced into this country in the year 1596 
it is sometimes found amongst us at a height of 
as much as eighty feet, with a trunk four feet 
in diameter. Its grooved, rigid, needle-shaped 
leaves, which are of considerable length, measuring 
frequently more than eight inches, grow in pairs— 
each pair mounted together in a short scaly sheath. 
Its cones (see illustration on page 505), when full 
grown, average in height about four or five inches, 
with somewhat less than half that width at 
their widest part. 
In ten years from first planting the seed, the 
Pinaster or Cluster Pine—so called from its cones 
being ordinarily produced in clusters—will, often- 
times, attain a height of as much as twelve feet, 
and in twenty years as much as thirty feet. Its 
timber is soft, and put chiefly to inferior uses, 
such as for packing cases, for inferior kinds of 
carpentry, and for fire-wood. From the growing 
