Garden. For these notices of pinetums in Ireland, we are indebted to Mr. Nuttall, Mr. Nevin, and Mr. Mackay, whose respective communications on the subject will be found in the Gardener's Magazine, vol. xiii.

Among nurserymen, the most complete collection in England is in the arboretum of Messrs. Loddiges; and next, as regards the number of rare species, are the collections of young plants grown for sale in the nurseries of Messrs. Brown at Slough, of Messrs. Osborne at Fulham, and of Messrs. Lee at Hammersmith. The best nursery collections in Scotland are, Mr. Lawson's at Edinburgh, and Mr. Roy's at Aberdeen; and the best in Ireland, that of Mr. Hodgkin at Dunganston. Mr. Charlwood is the principal British nurseryman for seeds of rare Abiétinæ, which he imports annually from America.

In France, the first collection of Abiétinæ worthy of notice appears to have been that of the celebrated Du Hamel, on his estate at Monceau, noticed p. 140. Since that period, several species have been sent from America by Michaux, or collected by the government gardeners, and planted in the grounds of the Trianon, at Versailles, and in the Bois de Boulogne. The Baron Tschoudy had a collection on his estate at Colombey; and M. Delamarre had extensive plantations at Vieil-Harcourt, in the department of the Maine, which he thought of so much importance, that he bequeathed them, together with his treatise on the subject (Traité Pratique de la Culture des Pins), to the French government. M. Vilmorin, the joint author with Michaux, of notes to the edition of Delamarre's work, published in 1831, has paid great attention to the subject of pines, and has tried many species on his estate at Barres, where he has collected all the species which he could procure, and planted them singly, or in groups, or masses; the sorts most nearly allied being placed adjoining to each other, with a view to the study of the species and varieties by botanists, when the plants shall be grown up. In this pinetum, M. Vilmorin has been particularly assiduous in procuring and planting all the varieties of the species most esteemed in Europe for their timber: such as P. sylvéstris, P. Larício, P. Pináster, &c. M. Puvis, who has given an account of M. Vilmorin's plantations, in his work entitled De l'Agriculture du Gatinais, &c., states that the pinetum at Barres is at all times open to the inspection and study of botanists and cultivators. Perhaps the most remarkable fact connected with the pine and fir tribe in France, is the circumstance of grafting having been performed on a large scale on the pine trees in the Forest of Fontainebleau, belonging to government. Here M. De Larminat, the conservator of the forest, had grafted many thousands of P. Larício on plants of Pinus sylvestris, which have become fine trees; and the practice is annually continued. In the French nurseries, the best collections are those of M. Vilmorin and M. Soulange-Bodin. In Germany, there are collections of pines in the different botanic gardens; and the most complete is that in the Berlin Garden: but even this is surpassed in number of species by the collection of Messrs. Booth, in the Floetbeck Nurseries.

Poetical, mythological, and legendary Allusions. The gloomy grandeur of the pine and fir tribe, their upright growth and great height, the regularity of their forms, and the murmuring of the winds through their stiff leaves and rigid branches, have made them favourites with the poets from the remotest antiquity. The Egyptians considered the pine as an emblem of the soul. Homer describes the residence of the Cyclops as "brown with o'erarching pine;" and other Greek poets tell us that the nymph Pitys, who was beloved by Pan, having slighted the passion of Boreas, was dashed by him against a rock, when the pitying Pan caused a pine tree to spring from her remains. Marsyas, who challenged Apollo to a trial of skill as a musician, and was afterwards flayed alive by that god for his presumption, was fastened to a pine tree, and left there to perish. He is often represented, in ancient sculptures, as tied with his hands behind his back to a lofty pine; while Apollo stands before him holding his lyre. Some authors, however, say that the place of Marsyas's suffering was against a plane tree. (See p. 2038.) The Roman poets frequently mention the pine. Ovid tells us that Polyphemus

carried with him a lofty pine tree, by way of walkingstick; that Ceres bore a flaming pine tree, plucked from Mount Etna, in each hand, during her search for her daughter Proserpine; and that Cybele, when her favourite Atys was about to destroy himself, changed him into a pine tree, and hence that tree was considered sacred to Cybele. He adds that a grove of sacred pines was among the trees moved by the music of Orpheus. Ovid also gives us the history of Sciron, or Cercyon, the pine-bender, a notorious robber, whose habit was, when he had taken a prisoner, to bend two pine trees, and to tie one of the prisoner's hands to each, and then to let the trees fly back, when the unfortunate traveller was torn asunder. This cruel monster was destroyed by Theseus. Virgil tells us that the ships of Æneas, which were afterwards changed into nymphs, were made of pine trees sacred to Cybele. He also alludes to the mournful sounds produced among the pine branches by the wind, and calls them the singing pines :

"The pines of Mænalus were heard to mourn,

And sounds of woe along the groves were borne."

The cones of the pine were sometimes sacrificed to Bacchus, because they were put into wine to give it a flavour; and sometimes to Esculapius, because their odour, being balsamic, was thought excellent for asthmas.

The pine tree is frequently mentioned by the elder British poets, principally as affording an object of comparison for tall and stately beauty, or for dark and gloomy grandeur. One of the finest allusions to the pine is by Milton, in his splendid description of Satan, in the first book of the Paradise Lost: :

Milton also says:

Among the more

"His spear, to equal which the tallest pine,
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great ammiral, were but a wand."

"His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow,
Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines,
With every plant, in sign of worship wave.

modern poets, perhaps the most beautiful lines relating to the pine are those of Barry Cornwall. Speaking of Polyphemus, he

says,

"Mighty tears then fill'd

His solitary eye, and with such noise

As the rough winds of autumn make when they
Pass o'er a forest, and bend down the pines,
The giant sigh❜d."

"Here dark trees

Funereal (cypress, yew, and shadowy pine

And spicy cedar) clustered; and at night
Shook from their melancholy branches sounds
And sighs like death."

Leigh Hunt has also some beautiful lines on the pine tree:

"And then there fled by me a rush of air
That stirred up all the other foliage there,
Filling the solitude with panting tongues;
At which the pines woke up into their songs,
Shaking their choral locks.

Death of Acis.

Ibid.

HUNT'S Foliage: Evergreens, p. 24.

"And 'midst the flowers, turf'd round beneath the shade

Of circling pines, a babbling fountain play'd;
And 'twixt the shafts you saw the water bright,

Which through the darksome tops glimmer'd with showering light."

Story of Rimini, canto iii.

Shelly thus describes one of the conflagrations in the Norway forests :—

"As the Norway woodman quells,

In the depth of piny dells,
One light flame among the brakes,
While the boundless forest shakes,

And its mighty trunks are torn
By the fire thus lowly born;
The spark beneath his feet is dead;
He starts to see the flame it fed,
Howling through the darken'd sky
With myriad tongues, victoriously."

Properties and Uses. The native forests of Abiétinæ are observed to be warmer in winter than those of any other evergreen tree in the same climate. They consequently afford excellent shelter for wild animals of every description, and one of the best substitutes for a house for man. In the north of Europe, this is more particularly applicable to the forests of spruce fir, which form so dense a covering as almost to exclude heat in summer, and cold in winter. The pine and fir tribe, in a living state, with the exception of the larch (that tree having tender foliage), afford food to but few insects; but the seeds are greedily devoured by the squirrel and other animals, and by some birds. In civilised society, the wood of the pine and fir tribe is in universal use, and forms one of the most important articles of European and American commerce. No other tree produces timber at once so long and so straight; and so light, and yet so strong and stiff; it is therefore peculiarly fitted for almost all the purposes of civil architecture, and for some peculiar uses in the construction of ships. Masts are every where made of it, where it can be pro

cured of sufficient size; and the yellow deal of Europe, which is produced by the Pinus sylvestris; the white deal of Norway, which is produced by the Abies excélsa; and the white pine wood of America, which is the Pinus Stròbus, are used throughout the civilised world in building and fitting up houses, in the construction of machinery, in furniture, and for an endless number of purposes. Log-houses (see fig. 2006.) are more conveniently made of trunks of the pine and fir tribe than of any other tree, on account of their straightness, and the slight degree in which they taper.

For the same reason, also, the worm fence of America (fig. 2007.), and the wooden fence of Sweden and Norway (fig.2008.), are always made of pine or fir wood, when it can be obtained. In Russia, Poland, and other parts of the north of Europe, and also in the interior of North America, roads are formed over

marshy ground by laying down the trunks of pine trees, side by side, and close together, across the line of road. In the latter country, these are called co duroy roads. In some parts of the towns of Russia, and particularly in Moscow and Kiow, regularly squared planks are laid down instead of rough trunks; and, both in Moscow and Vienna, the courts of some of the larger

mansions are paved with pieces of the trunk of about 18 in. in length, set side by side, and beaten down till they form a level surface, in the same way as is done when stones are used for a

similar purpose. This wood, from the quantity of resinous matter which it contains, is very combustible, and makes excellent fuel; and, in the Highlands of Scotland, splinters of it were formerly used as a substitute for candles; as they still are in some parts of Ire

land, and in Sweden, Norway, Russia, and some parts of North America. In the latter country, according to Michaux, the inhabitants, in some parts of the interior, split the red wood of the pine into pieces about the thickness of a finger, which they call candle wood, and burn instead of candles; but, on account of the disagreeable black smoke which these pine candles produce, they are generally burned in the chimney corner, upon a flat stone or iron. The branches, more especially those of the genera Abies and Picea, from their frond-like forms, are well adapted for protecting plants during winter, either in the open ground, or trained against walls. In Switzerland and Norway, they are used as food for cattle. The roots, and also the trunks, produce turpentine, resin, tar, pitch, and lampblack. The bark of the larch, and of several other species, is, or may be, used in tanning. P. Pínea affords a kernel which is valued for the dessert in Italy and Greece; the kernel of P. Cembra is equally prized in some parts of Switzerland. P. Lambertiana not only affords eatable nuts, but a substance which is used by the natives of California as sugar. The kernels of the araucarias are highly prized as food in Brazil; and, doubtless, those of most of the other species might be eaten, if freed from their resinous matter by roasting. A decoction of the tops of the spruce fir is employed for flavouring spruce beer; and from the inner bark, dried and ground, a kind of meal is produced, which, in the north of Europe, in times of scarcity, is mixed with that of rye and oats, and made into bread. The cones of pines and firs, thrown into wine or beer, have a tendency to check fermentation, and also to communicate an agreeable resinous flavour. The larch exudes a glutinous matter, which, in some countries, is collected by the natives, and used as a substitute for manna; and the same tree produces a fungus which is used medicinally in Siberia. The more hardy kinds of the pine and fir tribe are much valued in plantations as a shelter to others of a more tender kind; more especially the oak, which, as we have seen p. 1803., is protected in the government plantations, even in the south of England, for a number of years, by the Scotch pine. Few trees are so well adapted as the pine and fir tribe for covering immense tracts of barren, or even drifting, sands, with wood; either by directly sowing the seeds on the sand; or by sowing them among plants of broom or creeping grasses previously raised on drifting surfaces, in order to fix the sand and shelter the young pines. This practice has been carried to a great extent in France, on the shores of the Gulf of Gascony; where it was commenced in 1789, by Bremontier, an engineer connected with the national forests and waste lands of France. (See De Candolle's Physiologie Végétale, tom. iii. p. 1236., and the history of P. Pináster, in a future page.) Wherever waste ground is covered with heath alone, a forest of pines may easily be created by merely sowing the seeds among the heath. This is a remarkably simple mode of raising a forest of trees, but it scarcely applies to ground covered with any other description of herbage than heath, or to any other kinds of timber trees than those of the pine and fir tribe, and the birch. The poplar and the willow might be treated in the same manner, but the seeds of these can seldom be procured in sufficient quantity.

The most useful species of Abiétinæ, at least in Europe, in the existing state of the pine and fir forests, and of arboriculture, is unquestionably the

Scotch pine: next to it is the larch, and after that the spruce fir. When some of the newly introduced American and Himalayan species are better known, perhaps they may rank as high as, or higher than, these European ones; but at present, with the exception of A'bies Douglas, which promises to be a rapid-growing species, what they are likely ultimately to become in Britain must necessarily be only matter of conjecture.

Resinous substances have been extracted from the pine and fir tribe, since the days of Theophrastus, who has given (book ix. c. 10.) a very good account of the process, which has been copied, with very little variation, by all authors who have written on the subject, up to the time of Du Hamel; and which, as Dr. Clarke observes, corresponds so well with the modern practice in the north of Europe, that there is not the smallest difference between a tar-work in the forests of Westro-Bothnia, and one in those of ancient Greece. Du Hamel's account forms the groundwork of an article on the resinous productions of the pine and fir tribe by Dr. Maton, published in Lambert's Genus Pinus, vol. ii.; but the most complete treatise on the subject is in the Dictionnaire des Eaux et Forêts, where the German practices are given from Hartig and Burgsdorf; and those of France, Switzerland, and Italy, from modern authors of the respective countries. From these and other sources we shall here give what is general to all the Abiétina; and under the particular genera and species we shall insert the details for extracting and manufacturing the products peculiar to each. These products are various; but they may be all divided into two classes; viz. those obtained from the tree while it is in a living state, and those procured from the wood and roots after the tree is cut down. The first kinds are extracted from the trunk of the tree by making incisions in the bark or wood, from which a resinous matter flows in greater or less quantity, according to the kind of tree; and from this are procured, turpentine, liquid balsam, the common yellow and black rosins of the shops, oil and spirit of turpentine, and some minor articles. The other kinds are procured from the trunk, branches, and roots, after the tree is cut down, by the application of heat; and they include tar, pitch, lampblack, &c. The common turpentine is generally the produce of the pine; and the process for obtaining and manufacturing it will be given under the head Pìnus. The Strasburg and Venice turpentines are drawn from the silver fir and the larch (see Picea and Làrix); and the best yellow rosin is that of the spruce fir (see Abies). The resinous matter drawn from the trunk of pine trees is put into baskets, and placed over stone or earthenware jars. The fluid part, which runs from it, is the common turpentine; and the solid part left in the basket, when purified by boiling, is the common yellow rosin. Oil, and rectified spirit of turpentine, are distilled from the raw turpentine, and the residuum left after distillation is the black rosin, or colophony, used by players on the violin for their bows. Tar is procured by cutting the wood and roots into small pieces, and burning, or rather charring them, in a close oven, or heap covered by turf, while a tube or trough is left near the bottom of the heap or oven, through which the tar runs, in the form of a thick black fluid. The Swedish tar is the most highly esteemed in commerce; and that of Archangel ranks next to it. In the United States, Michaux informs us, tar is generally made from dead wood collected in the forests, and on this account it is considered very inferior to the tar of Europe. The lampblack is the soot evolved during this process, and is collected from the upper part of the oven, or from the turf which has covered the heap; and pitch is merely tar boiled to dryness. The resinous matter of the spruce, like that of the pine, is collected from incisions made in the bark; but it does not yield its turpentine without the aid of heat and pressure. The resinous juice of the silver fir is obtained by collecting the natural exudations on the surface of its trunk; and that of the larch, from the interior of the trunk, by tapping it with an auger, as is done to obtain the sap of the birch and the sugar maple.

The chemical properties of the resinous juice of the pine and fir tribe have been given at length by Dr. Maton, in Lambert's Genus Pinus, from