48 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
From the pines are obtained the best masts, and much of the 
most valuable ship timber; and in the building and finishing of 
houses, they are of almost indispensable utility. The bark of 
some of them, as the hemlock and larch, is of great value in 
tanning; and from others are obtained the various kinds of 
pitch, tar, turpentine, resins and balsams, so important in a 
commercial and economic point of view. Oil of turpentine, 
and Bordeaux and Strasbure turpentine, are obtained from 
different species of pine; Burgundy pitch from the resin of the 
Norway spruce; Venetian turpentine from the larch; Hunga- 
rian and Carpathian balsams from®pines, and Canadian balsam 
from our native fir. Liquid storax and the aromatic sandarach 
are the products of oriental and African trees of the same family. 
Extracts of hemlock and spruce enter into the composition of 
spruce beer, as do juniper berries into that of gin, and to them 
it probably owes its valuable diuretic properties. The seeds of 
several of the larger pines are eatable.* 
There is also another circumstance in their history, of great 
interest to a country so large portions of which are spread over 
with sterile siliceous sands. On these, which are almost barren 
* Lindley’s Nat. Sys., 2d edit. p. 315. The juice of the pine is called lhquid 
resin or turpentine. Common turpentine is the resin of the Scotch fir, Pinus syl- 
vestris, and is obtained by making incisions in the bark and wood. Yellow resin 
1s obtained from this by boiling it down; and essential oil of turpentine, or spirits 
of turpentine, by distillation with water, the residuum from which operation is 
common resin, black resin or colophony. These substances are extensively used 
in medicine, by painters in paints and varnishes, and in various processes of the 
arts. Tar 1s obtained by slowly burning splintered pine, both trunk and root, 
without free access of air, and collecting the liquid in cavities beneath the burning 
pile. Pitch is common resin and tar melted together. Lamp-black is made by 
burning the impurities of tar and pitch and collecting the soot. The imner bark of 
the Scotch fir is, by the natives of some northern regions, collected in spring, 
dried and preserved, to be baked on coals, ground, and kneaded into bread. 
Hungarian balsam exudes from the branches of the Mugho pine, P. pumulio, and 
an essential oil, called Krumholz oil, is distilled therefrom. Carpathian balsam 
is distilled from the shoots of the Siberian stone pine, P. Cembra. Strasburg 
turpentine is the liquid resin of the silver fir, P. picea, collected from the vesi- 
cles in the bark; as is Canada balsam or balsam of Gilead, from those in the 
bark of our balsam fir, P. balsamea. Concrete resin exudes from the Norway 
spruce; Burgundy pitch is prepared, by boiling, from the resinous juice of the 
same tree, flowing from incisions in the bark. 
