CONIFERiE. 



131 



thus obtained from the retorts, which, by 02:)pressing the head, though 

 without pain, produces sleep ; and is used for this purpose for the sick. 

 Sundry ancient writers make mention of it ; suffice it here that I 

 refer my reader to two more of them, Dioscorides, 1. i, c. 87 ; and 

 Plutarch in his " Symposiaca," 1. iii, c. 2, says: — Mountainous and 

 windy and snowy places produce woods of a pitchy nature, suitable for 

 torches, especially ' TrevKag mt 'CpofDiKoL " Pycce and Strohili ; doubtless 

 our Silver Fir, and highly resinous, odoriferous, Strobus Pine. 



The tree Strohus of the ancients, so called " Quai rami ejus tortiles 

 whereof perfumes were made, mixed with the wine of dates, may or 

 may not be our '^Pinus Strohus yet, I take it as such, inasmuch as 

 all of their descriptions of the tree, their dissertations upon its juice, 

 wood, foliage, cones, or branches, and all the derivations and transla- 

 tions of the term QTpo(j)o, are not only significant, but truthful to a 

 degree, as representing this Pine ; either in the disposition of its ver- 

 ticillate branches, its twisted or twirled leaves, its rope-like cones, or 

 its rich and highly odoriferous resinous juices. 



The " Strobus Pine" was introduced into this country about the 

 beginning of the 18th century, and was sent to us from America ; but 

 it, or some of its quasi-species or varieties, has more recently been sent 

 to Britain from most parts of the habitable globe, for it is now to be 

 found in most countries either in an indigenous or exotic state. The 

 prototype is popularly known in this country as the Weymouth 

 Pine," Lord Weymouth having been the first extensive planter of it as 

 a timber tree, upon his Wiltshire estate. 



It is the prototype of nearly one-half the quasi-species and varieties 

 of the Pines at j)resent extant ; and being, as it is, so very much 

 affected in its stature and dimensions, and so much influenced in the 

 size of its cones and foliage, as well as in the quality and quantity of 

 its ligneous tissue and resinous juice, by the soil and climate in which 

 it may produce them ; and being, moreover, one of the best constitu- 

 tioned and most accommodating of the pines, this accounts for its now 

 numerous forms ; which, as time rolls on, and change transforms, are 

 still increasing in number and degree of inefiable difl'erences ; never- 

 theless without any real or well marked distinctions ; for of the extant 

 forms the exact size of cone and foliage is all of the products that is 

 not to be found in the fossil-graves of the extinct forms — nay rather of 

 the extant prototype. 



But even amid all this variety in degree, great in number though it 

 be, it is only variety within the bounds of natural law ; for in all the 



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