PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
219 
“ They came, they cut away my tallest Pines—■ 
My dark tall Pines, that plumed the craggy ledge— 
High o’er the blue gorge, and all between 
The snowy peak and snow-white cataract 
Fostered the callow eaglet; from beneath 
Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn 
The panther’s roar came muffled while I sat 
Down in the valley .”—Complaint of (Enone. 
Sir Walter Scott similarly describes the tree in the pretty and 
well-known lines— 
“Aloft the Ash and warrior Oak 
Cast anchor in the rifted rock ; 
And higher yet the Pine tree hung 
His shattered trunk, and frequent flung, 
Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high, 
His boughs athwart the narrow sky.” 
Yet the Pine which was best known to Shakespeare, and 
perhaps the only Pine he knew, was the Pinus sylvestris , or 
Scotch fir, and this, though flourishing on the highest hills 
where nothing else will flourish, certainly attains its fullest 
beauty in sheltered lowland districts. There are probably 
much finer Scotch firs in Devonshire than can be found in 
Scotland. This is the only indigenous Fir, though the Pinus 
pinaster claims to be a native of Ireland, some cones having 
been supposed to be found in the bogs, but the claim is not 
generally allowed (there is no proof of the discovery of the 
cones); and yet it has become so completely naturalized on 
the coast of Dorsetshire, especially about Bournemouth, that 
it has been admitted into the last edition of Sowerby’s “ English 
Botany.” 
But though the Scotch Fir is a true native, and was pro¬ 
bably much more abundant in England formerly than it is now, 
the tree has no genuine English name, and apparently never 
had. Pine comes directly and without change from the Latin 
Pinus , as one of the chief products, pitch, comes directly from 
the Latin pix. In the early vocabularies it is called “ Pin- 
treow,” and the cones are “ Pin-nuttes.” They were also 
