DESCRIPTIVE ENUMERATION OP TREES. 113 



know, produces beauty even from deformity itself. 

 Opposed therefore to the wildness of otlier trees, 

 the regularity of the Weymouth Pine may have 

 its beauty. Its formality may be* concealed. A 

 few of its branches, hanging from a mass of 

 heavier foliage, may appear light and feathery, 

 while its spiry head may often form an agreeable 

 apex to a clump. 



Having thus considered the Pine race, we next 

 take a view of a tribe nearly allied to them — that 

 of Firs. In what the distinction between these 

 two tribes consists (though I apprehend it con- 

 sists in little more than in that between genus 

 and species), the botanist will explain. I profess 

 myself an observer only of outward characters. 

 What we usually call the Scotch Fir appears to 

 me to approach nearer the Pine in its manner of 

 growth, than it does any of its nominal class. 

 As this tree, therefore, seems to be of ambiguous 

 nature, at least as to its form, I shall place it 

 here — that is immediately after the Pines, and 

 before the Firs, that it may with facility join one 

 party or the other, as the reader's botanical 

 principles incline. 



