18 PINES 
disposition still in its efforts at growth; and when 
we say this we must bear in mind that naturalists 
tell us that the more intelligent animals take longer 
to grow up than the less intelligent—that, for example, 
while civilized man takes twenty years, uncivilized 
men take only fourteen; or, again, that while an 
orang-outang takes twelve years to mature, the lesser- 
developed Japanese ape accomplishes his destiny of 
a full growth in four years; last on the list comes 
the rat, who becomes full grown in a year. Whether 
this habit of slow growth has any application in the 
case of trees, and is a sign of a higher culture, as it 
is in the animals, we hazard no opinion; we cite it 
in a pari ratione (by similar reasoning) sense, with 
the remark added that it is generally conceded that 
slow-growing trees make the best timber, and the 
wood of Cembra has always been in much demand 
and put to many uses by the inhabitants of the 
country it comes from. We may add to its qualities 
of adaptability that it transplants, probably on 
account of these sluggish tendencies, with more ease 
than most of its kind. 
Their average height as a group, however you 
reckon it, would have to be underwritten at con- 
siderably less than half the height of the trees of the 
previous group. In thus estimating them we leave 
out the P. Koraiensis, as it is so far an unknown 
quantity among us: it has not yet had time to declare 
its intentions as to the stature it aims at attaining 
here. 
On the other hand, among the Strobi in this cal- 
culation we include its little misfit relation and 
squab of the family, the P. Parviflora, which pulls 
their average down badly. 
These are but a few jogtrot observations upon 
some of their characteristics, and we confess that 
they shed but a dim light upon their identification, 
