84 
WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND TREES. 
of equal value as a timber-producer with any other tree. Owing 
to our mild winters and long periods of seasonal growth, the 
Pine-wood produced in Britain is coarse-grained and not very 
durable. In the colder parts of Northern Europe, where 
summers are short and the long winters are severe, the texture 
of the timber is more solid and the grain closer. And so 
enormous quantities of Pine-wood come to us from the Baltic 
ports every year. In addition to the timber, other valuable 
substances known to commerce are products of the Scots Pine 
— pitch and tar, resin and turpentine, for example. The Pine 
is an accommodating tree, for though it likes a deep soil in 
which to strike its tap-root, it will grow upon rocky ground, 
where the roots have to become horizontal and near the sur- 
face ; or it will form forests on poor sandy soils, even on the 
loose hot sands near the seashore. This is a valuable power, 
because the fall of its needles gradually forms a humus, and so 
provides food for other plants which could not exist on raw 
sand. 
Other coniferous trees that have become more or less familiar 
in our plantations and parks will be found in the second division 
of this book. 
The Holly {Ilex aquifoUuni). 
The Holly must be regarded as one of our small trees, 
although many specimens attain a height of forty or fifty feet, 
with a girth of ten or twelve feet. It is well distributed throughout 
our islands, ascending to a thousand feet, and it is probable that 
no other tree is so well known, by its foliage at least, as the Holly, 
or Holm, to give it its ancient name. The word Holm was in- 
corporated by some of our ancestors far back in the name 
Holmsdale, which still attaches to the stretch of country at the 
southern foot of the chalk hills in Surrey, and whose proud 
motto is, “ Never wonne, ne never shall.” At the western end 
