MONADELFHIA. POLYANDRIA. Pinus. 817 
Barr. 729—Tourn. 355, 356, P. Q.—Matth. 98— Ger. 1175. 2—J. B. i. b. 
253— Bod. 860. 1— Lob. Obs. 631. 2, and Ic. ii. 226. 2— Ger. Em. 1356. 1. 
(Barren and fertile flowers sometimes observable upon different trees. 
Oelhav. Young cones stalked, recurved; afterwards hard and woody, 
the numerous scales finally starting asunder. Crest of the anthers 
very small. Style one to each germen. Stigma prominent, obtuse, 
evanescent. Sin. An evergreen, sub-conical, straight tree, seventy 
to eighty feet high, sending forth horizontal branches, and main¬ 
taining constantly a dismal dark glaucous green foliage. Stem reddish 
brown, the bark scaling off in thickish plates. Leaves very straight, and 
slender, strap-shaped, rigid, smooth, channelled on the upper surface, 
convex underneath. E.) 
Scotch Fir, (Wild Pine. Irish: Crann Guivhais. Welsh: Pinwy- 
dden wyllt. Gaelic: An Guithas. E.) Highland mountains, both scat¬ 
tered, and in natural forests of many miles extent. Lightfoot. 
T. May.* * 
Aid worth, Berkshire, one of prodigious bulk, at four feet from the ground measuring nine 
yards in circumference : in Selborne church-yard one 24 feet in girt: in Totteridge do. one 
32 feet. It is particularly valuable to cabinet makers and inlayers : in Germany stoves 
are vvainscotted with this material. Evelyn. A large sound Yew-tree has been sold for one 
hundred pounds. It is said to attain the age of four hundred years or more. E.) 
* The Fir flourishes best in a poor and sandy soil. (In Ireland much of this tree is found 
in the bogs, and the wood beaten into strings, combed and spun, is thus manufactured 
into ropes capable of resisting the weather longer than those made from hemp. The 
fishermen of Loch-Broom, in Ross-shire, convert the bark to similar purposes. Forests of 
Fir have been discovered imbedded in various parts of England, especially in the mosses of 
the north, and as forming a substratum to Roman roads over bogs. Fir timber is 
frequently dug up in the peat-bogs of Anglesey. On sinking the outlet of a lake called 
Llyn Llwydiart, in the parish of Fentraeth, some venerable remains have lately been 
discovered, as stumps of uncommon size, &c., worthy the inspection of the intelligent 
tourist. Rev. Hugh Davies. Caesar asserts the Fir not to be a native of Britain : 
“ Materia cujusque generis, ut in Gallia, praster Fagum et Abietem” Of the Beech we 
have already treated. To the Fir, the claim of this country may be still more clearly 
established. Probably the earlier campaigns of the Roman conqueror did not afford an 
opportunity of contemplating this tree in its primary stations: but, according to the 
ingenious arguments of Mr. Whitaker in his History of Manchester, the Fir is perpetually 
discovered in such of our mosses as were demonstrably extant prior to the settlement of the 
Romans among us ; among the many Roman names for the Fir in the British language, 
there are three which are purely and absolutely British ; and further, Firs actually appear 
as early as the third century in the unromanized regions of Caledonia and Ireland, as the 
acknowledged aborigines of the country : e. g. the tomb of a fallen warrior, upon the 
western shore of Caledonia, is thus described from the reality by the bard: “ Dost thou 
not behold, Malvina, a rock with its head of heath f Three aged Firs bend from its face ; 
green is the narrow plain at its feet.” These facts must prove irresistible, even against 
ancient classical authority. Some antiquaries have imagined that Caesar referred 
to a species of Pine larger than our common Fir, and which Irish tradition represents 
as haviqg been introduced into these islands by the Danes $ on whose expulsion, the 
mal-treated “ incolesp wreaked their vengeance even upon these harmless mementos of 
their subjugation. But such subterraneous strata of Bog Fir are not peculiar to the 
sister island, (where the bogs of Glancullen alone supply Dublin with fuel), for they exist 
also in both North and South Britain ; and it is scarcely to be conceived that three 
nations, however barbarous, should simultaneously be impelled to so absurd a mode of 
displaying their resentment. Cenangium (Peziza) ferruginosum , Grev. Scot. Crypt. 197. 
“ Gregarious, between membranaceous and leathery, subsessile, rugose, somewhat pruinose, 
reddish-black, the orifice compressed, inflexed, when moist spreading, the disk yellow 
may often be found covering the greater part of a fallen Fir tree. Ips piniperdus assists 
Q 2 
