52 PINES 
are casting wistful glances on its possibilities to make 
good bare defects. 
The tree is in shape of a stunted type. Its short- 
ness of leaf (about 1} in. long), its plentiful abundance 
of persistent cones, tapering to a point, and curved 
as a ram’s horn, make it intelligibly conspicuous to 
any observer. 
Of this tree it is written, as of most of its group, 
that it is of no ornamental or any other value. The 
old Greek gods of an ancient world had a custom of 
converting beautiful maidens and glowing youths in 
whose career they were interested, and generally 
those who had been cut off before their prime by some 
untimely fate, into the forms of trees and shrubs, or 
lovely flowers. What form of man, or figure of a 
woman, would these all-glorious old Pagan deities 
have selected to immortalize by converting into the 
shape of any member of the Banksiana group—the 
majority of which are inelegant, and the remainder 
of which are squat of shape—and converted them 
on their usually adopted principle of similia 
similibus (like to like), we tremble to think. We 
will leave it to our readers to select their own model, 
and, if they-so wish, from the circle of their own 
acquaintance. 
PINASTER GROUP OF BIN& (TWO-LEAVED) 
PINES 
P. PinasTeR, Pinea, SYLVESTRIS, DENSIFLORA, 
Montana, ConTortTa, RESINOSA, THUNBERGII, 
Laricio, LEUCODERMIS. 
Lift to the skies her canopy of woods. 
Tue PINAsTER GrouP.—The net result of opinion 
collected from the various sources of authorities, 
writers, and tree-growers of past and present days 
seems to amount to this : that, whereas the Banksiana 
