518 EVERGREEN TREES AND SHRUBS. 
globular head ; which form, not being in harmony with the nature of 
the tree, would do injustice to its beauty. To reduce its size and 
add to the luxuriance of its foliage without varying too much from its 
native form, and materially changing its expression, will be a pleas¬ 
ant study for the amateur gardener. Not only, however, is the tree 
capable of being improved in form and foliage by judicious prun¬ 
ing, but it is so far docile to the hand of art that it may be reduced 
even to hedge-limits, and will bear the shears or the pruning-knife 
to shape it into other artificial forms of embellishment. 
Those who have seen the white pine as exposed in its native 
forests, a bare and lofty black-barked trunk, with a monotonous 
uniformity of meagre-foliaged branches in level whorls towards 
its summit only, can with difficulty realize the graceful spread¬ 
ing luxuriance of the tree in rich sandy open ground. The 
foliage is a warm light-green, often with a bluish tinge. The 
leaves, five in a sheath, are from three to four inches long, slender, 
straight, soft to the touch, and delicately fragrant. They fall at the 
end of their second summer, so that each summer the tree is 
clothed with two years’ foliage, while in winter it has only the pre¬ 
ceding summer’s leaves. The cones are from four to six inches 
long, curved, cucumber-shaped, and drooping. The bark is dark, 
smooth on young trees, and grows rough and darker with age. 
High winds are the greatest enemy of the white pine. Its wood 
is not so tough as that of most deciduous trees. In winter the 
foliage catches and holds the snow, which sometimes breaks the 
branches by its weight alone, but oftener by the assistance of the 
wind when they are thus loaded. Trees grown from the beginning 
in places fully exposed to the wind will be more likely to resist 
such strains, and become strong old trees, than those which have 
grown up in sheltered places, or in too rich a soil. 
A warm, sandy soil, with a clay substratum, is the one in which 
this pine is most at home, and its rate of growth (at the top) in 
such soils, is about three feet a year. In stiff clays, or in cold or 
“clammy” soils, it does poorly, and has but little beauty. But by 
deep drainage even these may be changed, so as to allow the 
white pine to develop handsomely. 
There are a few very pretty dwarf varieties, as follows : 
