WESTERN WEYMOUTH MOUNTAIN PINK. 45 



minutest. Indeed, it is, in every way, the apt and recognized 

 emblem of juvenile innocence and early perceptivity. 



The timber is well known the world over — chiefly, as noted, 

 for internal work — this being tougher, seldom shaky, less 

 pin-knotty, clearer and straighter-grained ; makes good 

 frames and floors, ceilings and laths; also, masts and spars, 

 etc., although the Russians seem to prefer the Sitka Spruce 

 (Tsii</<i Sitkensis); the bark is of wide repute for tanning; 

 fibrous roots yield the strong thread and cordage for seines, 

 nets, and for sewing or lashing the birch-bark canoe or boat 

 of the native ; the crude gum-like balsam smears and water- 

 tights the same — refined, it is the Burgundy Pitch of the 

 apothecary, from whence come the renal and sciatica plas- 

 ters — and the inner bark itself is also used for a sticking- 

 plaster of much renown. From the tender twigs, or their 

 extract, the wholesome spruce beer is still made, as in the 

 days when we were young; a kind of oil, also like spirits of 

 turpentine, and the lamp-black, scarcely inferior to any his 

 sooty highness ever saw. In short, in medicine it has had 

 and still holds a good reputation, as balsamic, sudorific, anti- 

 rheumatic, tonic, etc., and for scrofula, even better than 

 brake — equal the oak — and for unnumbered " ills that flesh 

 is heir to." 



WESTERN WEYMOUTH MOUNTAIN PINE. 



(Pinus montieola.) 



" Seemed an osprey, 

 Hovering above his prey — and yen tall pines, 

 Their tops half mantled in a snowy veil." 



THE Far Western Mountain Pine of the Pacific bears 

 the strongest resemblance to the great Sugar Pine, of 

 which it seems almost like a smaller variety of the 

 same species (hence designated Little Sugar Pine). The gen- 

 eral contour and expression of the tree is scarce at all like 

 the White Pine (P. strobus) of the Eastern Atlantic ; true, it 

 has the common cone characters of the thin scaled Strobus 

 section, and five-clustered needles as in Lambert's Sugar 

 Pine also, but the port and form, as indicated, is as distinct 

 as it well can be for one of the same subdivision of pines. 

 Before the tree has attained to its true matured and distinct- 

 ive type, it has the common closer form of many other spe- 



* See Meehan's Obs. on the E. Hemlock; also. German literature. 



