EIR TREE. 
22.9 
and, running to the bottom of the furnace, is car- 
ried from thence, through a pipe in the side, into a 
vessel placed on purpose to catch it. By this sim- 
ple process all our tar is prepared, and may be said 
to consist merely of the resinous juice of the fir, 
blackened by the smoke to which it is exposed in 
its passage through the furnace. After all the tar 
is run off, the apertures of the furnace are carefully 
closed, and the whole left in this state for some 
days ; after which it is opened, and the charcoal 
taken out. 
Pitch is nothing more than tar reduced by evapo- 
ration, till it becomes a solid and tenacious mass. 
Having thus described the manner in which 
these trees are made to yield their most valuable 
products, we shall conclude the article with a short 
account of the nourishment which some of the 
hardy northern people derive from them. We al- 
lude to the bark-bread, which Dr. Maton has no- 
ticed in his valuable additions to Mr. Lambert’s 
splendid work on the pine trees. “We are in- 
formed by Linnaeus,” says this gentleman, “ that 
the Laplanders eat, during a great part of the win- 
ter, and sometimes even during the whole year, a 
preparation of the inner bark of the pine, which is 
called among these people barhbread. This sub- 
stance is made in the following manner: After a 
selection of the tallest and least ramose trees, (for 
the dwarf branching ones contain too great a quantity 
of resinous juice) the dry and scaly external bark is 
