I. THE PINES. 53 
and which have been regarded with superstition or incredulity, 
of showers of sulphur.* 
The female flower has till recently been considered as a pis- 
til enclosed by a calyx and accompanied by one or more scales. 
Robert Brown has satisfactorily shown that in all plants of this 
natural family, there is neither pistil nor stigma, but that what 
have been considered such, are merely the extremities of a tube 
leading to a naked ovule, which is fertilized by the direct con 
tact of the pollen from the male flower. In several of the gen- 
era the female flowers are. single, and terminal or axillary. In 
most others they are arranged in cones. They are extremely 
simple, consisting usually of two scales, one which hardens 
and enlarges and forms a part of the surface of the cone, and a 
thinner one within it. 
The ovary, with the calyx scale to which it more or less 
adheres, becomes the fruit. 'These have a great variety of 
appearance, from the fleshy, berry-like fruit of the yew and juni- 
per, to the winged scale of the pine; but, when carefully exam- 
ined, in their earlier stages, they are seen to have a strong resem- 
blance; the fruit of the yew being formed by an extraordinary 
development of the receptacle, which, in most of the other genera, 
experiences little change, in the true pines a portion only of 
calyx expanding into a membranous wing. 
The cones of many of the pines require two or three years to 
come to perfection. That of Pinus pinea, the stone pine of 
Europe, with edible seeds, requires four. During the first sea- 
son the cone attains one-third part of its size; in the second it 
reaches its full size but remains green; in the third the scales 
usually become dry, change color and open, and the winged 
seed escapes and is carried to a distance by the winds. 
The seeds of many of the pines are large and eatable. ‘Those 
of our forests are small, but they are eagerly eaten by such birds 
as have the means of separating them from their cones; such 
as the pine cross-bill; and they furnish a portion of the winter’s 
* Poiret, Botanique, Dictionnaire Méthodique, V.,331. Lambert, descmbing the 
common Scotch fir, says, “ The pollen is sometimes in spring carried away by the 
wind in such quantities, as to alarm the ignorant with the notion of its raining 
brimstone.’ —Genus Pinus, p. 2. 
