pped as fully into the oak treasures of the Arnold
Arboretum as I want to some day. But my camera is yet available and the
trees are waiting; the tree love is growing and the tree friends are
inviting, and together we will add to the oak knowledge and to that
thankfulness for God and life and love and friends that the trees do
most constantly cause to flourish.

The Pines

In popular estimation, the pines seem to belong to the North, not quite
so exclusively as do the palms to the South. The ragged, picturesque old
pines, spruces and hemlocks of our remembrance carry with them the
thought of great endurance, long life and snowy forests. We think of
them, too, as belonging to the mountains, not to the plains; as clothing
steep slopes with their varied deep greens rather than as standing
against the sky-line of the sea. Yet I venture to think that the most of
us in the East see oftenest the pines peculiar to the lowlands, as we
flit from city to city over the steel highways of travel, and have most
to do, in an economical sense, with a pine that does not come north of
the Carolinas--the yellow pine which furnishes our familiar
house-flooring.

The pine family, as we discuss it, is not all pines, in exactitude--it
includes many diverse trees that the botanist describes as conifers.
These cone-bearing trees are nearly all evergreens--that is, the foliage
persists the year round, instead of being deciduous, as the
leaf-dropping maples, oaks, birches, and the like are scientifically
designated. Historically the pines are of hoary age, for they are
closely related to the growths that furnished the geologic coal measures
stored up in the foundations of the earth for our use now. Economically,
too, all the pine family together is of vast importance--"the most
important order of forest trees in the economy of civilized man," says
Dr. Fernow; for, as he adds, the cone-bearing trees "have furnished the
bulk of the material of which our civilization is built." As usual,
civilization has destroyed ruthlessly, thoughtlessly, almost viciously,
in using this material; wherefore the devastation of the forests, moving
them back from us farther and farther until in many regions they are but
a thin fringe, has left most of us totally unfamiliar with these trees,
of the utmost beauty as well as of the greatest value.

[Illustration: A lone pine on the Indian River]

To know anything at all of the spruces, pines and hemlocks is t