The acerose or needle leaf of the Pine seems necessary to protect the tree from injury; for if their leaves were of a broader form, the branches would be borne down, in winter, by the weight of snow in the northern latitudes, and they would be more liable to be uprooted by the mighty hurricane. It is, however, enabled thus to evade both; as the snow falls through, and the winds penetrate between, the interstices of its filiform leaf. Struggling through the branches, the wind comes in contact with such an innumerable quantity of points and edges, as, even when gentle, to produce a deep murmur, or sighing; but when the breeze is strong, or the storm is raging abroad, it produces sounds like the murmuring of the ocean, or the beating of the surge and billows among the rocks :

The loud wind through the forest wakes

With sounds like ocean roaring, wild and deep,
And in yon gloomy Pines strange music makes,
Like symphonies unearthly heard in sleep;
The sobbing waters wash their waves and weep:
Where moans the blast its dreary path along,
The bending Firs a mournful cadence keep,
And mountain rocks re-echo to the song,

As fitful raves the wind the hills and woods among.

DRUMMOND.

Wordsworth, also, thus speaks of Pine-trees moved by a gentle breeze :—

An idle voice the Sabbath region fills
Of deep that calls to deep across the hills,
Broke only by the melancholy sound
Of drowsy bells for ever tinkling round;
Faint wail of eagle melting into blue

Beneath the cliffs, and Pine-wood's steady sugh.

The quality of the timber of the Scotch Fir, according to some, is altogether dependent on soil, climate, and slowness of growth; but, according to others, it depends jointly on these circumstances, and on the kind of variety cultivated. It is acknowledged that the timber of the Scotch Fir, grown on rocky surfaces, or where the soil is dry and sandy, is generally more resinous and redder in colour, than that of such as grow on soils of a clayey nature, boggy, or on chalk. At what time the sap wood is transformed into durable or red wood, has not yet been determined by vegetable physiologists. The durability of the red timber of this tree was supposed by Brindley, the celebrated engineer, to be as great as that of the oak; and some of it, grown in the north Highlands, is reported to have been as fresh and full of resin after having been three hundred years in the roof of an old castle, as newly-imported timber from Memel.

The red wood timber of the Scottish forests, similar, in every respect, to the best Baltic Pine, is the produce of trees that have numbered from one to two or more centuries. In Norway, it is not considered full-grown timber till it has reached from one hundred and thirty to two hundred years. It seems, then, rather preposterous, that any one should expect that plantation Fir timber, cut down when, perhaps, not more than thirty years old, and consisting entirely of sap wood, should be adapted to all those purposes which require the best fullgrown and matured timber; and yet such seems very generally to have been the case, and to the

disappointment at not finding those expectations realized, may be attributed a large portion of that prejudice and dislike so generally entertained towards this tree.

On Hampstead Heath, near London, there are a number of Pines which are said to have been raised from seed brought from Ravenna. If so, the cones are very different from those of the Ravenna Pine described by Leigh Hunt:

Various the trees and passing foliage there,—
Wild pear, and oak, and dusky juniper,
With bryony between in trails of white,
And ivy, and the suckle's streaky light,

And moss warm gleaming with a sudden mark,
Like flings of sunshine left upon the bark;
And still the Pine long-haired, and dark, and tall,
In lordly right, predominant o'er all.

Much they admire that old religious tree,
With shaft above the rest up-shooting free,
And shaking, when its dark locks feel the wind,
Its wealthy fruit with rough Mosaic rind.

*

THE SILVER FIR.

[Abies picea. Nat. Ord-Coniferæ; Linn.-Monac. Mon.] THE Silver Fir is indigenous to the mountains of Central Europe, and to the west and north of Asia, rising to the commencement of the zone of the Scotch fir. It is found in France, on the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Vosges; in Italy, Spain, Greece, and the south of Germany; also in Russia and Siberia; but it is not found indigenous in Britain or Ireland. On the Carpathian mountains it is

P

found to the height of 3200 feet; and on the Alps, to the height of from 3000 to 4000 feet. Wherever it is found of a large size, as in the neighbourhood of Strasburg, and in the Vosges, where it has attained the height of one hundred and fifty feet, it invariably grows in good soil, and in a situation sheltered rather than exposed. It appears to have been introduced into England about the commencement of the seventeenth century; as we learn from Evelyn, that in 1663 there were two Silver Firs growing at Harefield, Middlesex, which were there planted sixty years before, at two years' growth from the seed, the larger of which had risen to the height of 81 feet, and was 13 feet in girth below; and it was calculated that it contained 146 feet of good timber.

In full-grown trees, the trunk of the Silver Fir is from six to eight feet in diameter, covered, till its fortieth or fiftieth year, with a whitish-gray bark, tolerably smooth; but, as it increases in age, it becomes cracked and chapped. At a still greater age, the bark begins to scale off in large pieces, leaving the trunk of a dark brown colour beneath. The branches stand out horizontally, as do the branchlets and spray, with reference to the main stem of the branch. The leaves on young trees are distinctly two-rowed, and the general surface of the rows is flat; but, as the tree advances in age, and especially on cone-bearing shoots, the disposition of the leaves is less perfect. In every stage of growth they are turned up at the points; but more especially so on old