182 THE PINE TREE. 
Notwithstanding the rapid growth of the plant when young, 
it is not a favourite tree with planters in general throughout 
this country, except within the influence of the sea, where the 
variety maritima and all the other varieties of the tree grow 
better than most plants. In rich or wet soil it does not 
endure the frosts of winter ; a dry, deep, sandy soil is indis- 
pensable to its profitable growth, and in the vicinity of the 
sea the temperature is to some extent equalized and adapted 
for its development. Some of the best specimens of the tree 
in Britain are to be found in the county of Norfolk, standing 
nearly 80 feet high, with trunks 12 feet in girth ; many such 
trees stand at Westwick Park, where few other species of 
trees would become timber. On this property the tree has 
been planted at intervals during the last 150 years, and it is 
the principal species in a plantation of 500 acres produced 
from seed grown on the property. In raising any of the more 
tender kinds of the Coniferze, home-grown seed should always 
be preferred to that grown in a warmer climate ; the rate of 
growth may be rather shorter for the first few years, but if 
they are exempt from the influence of frost, as is the case 
with the native pine and the home-grown larch, compared 
with those from imported seed, there is often all the difference 
between a healthy plantation and a total failure. In open 
sands the pinaster strikes its roots to a great depth, and de- 
rives its support from soil several fathoms below the surface ; 
it is of rapid growth, often attaining the height of 30 feet in 
twenty years,and a tree has sometimes been known to grow five 
feet in two years. In Scotland, when the tree is interspersed 
in plantations, it has a tendency to grow crooked and towards 
the side most exposed, and appears to prefer an open and airy 
situation. I have seen it in some of the weather-beaten 
islands of the Hebrides affording shelter as a hedge five or 
six feet high where few or no other ligneous plants could live. 
In a congenial soil it becomes a large handsome pyramidal tree, 
and all the varieties are distinguished by their light green 
foliage of a clustering habit of growth, occasioned by bare 
spaces on the branches which have produced male catkins, 
