money to be turned over to
their murder experts. In the pine trees we have opportunity for
combining beauty and utility. As a group they are mountain lovers
preferring localities where the air drainage is particularly good, but
many of them will grow thriftily and will fruit well on low grounds.
Fine nuts range in character from the rich, sugary, oily and highly
nitrogenous nut of the Mexican pinon to the more starchy _bunya bunya_
of Australia, as large as a small potato and not much better than a
potato, unless it is roasted or boiled. Yet this latter pine is valuable
for food purposes and the British Government has reserved one forest of
the species thirty miles long and twelve miles wide in which no one is
allowed to cut trees.

The nut of the _Araucaria imbricata_ has constituted a basis for
contention among Indian tribes in Chile for centuries, and perhaps more
blood has been shed over the forests of this pine than over any other
single source of food supply in the world. We do not know if the _Pinus
imbricata_ will fruit in the climate and at the latitude of New York,
but I know that at least one tree of the species has lived for twenty
years on the Palmer estate here in Stamford.

Some of the smaller pine nuts like those of the single-leaved pine, or
of the sugar pine, are delicious when cracked and eaten out of hand, but
the smaller pine nuts are pounded up by the Indians with a little water
and the thick, rich, creamy emulsion like hickory milk when pressed out,
is evaporated down to a point where the milk can be kept for a long time
without decomposition. In addition to the nuts of the sugar pine, the
Indians collect the sugar of dried juice which exudes at points where
cuts have been made in the tree for the purpose. Incidentally, the sugar
pine is one of our finest American trees anyway. Botanists tell us that
it grows to a height of two hundred and seventy-five feet, and
travellers say that it reaches three hundred feet. The latter people
having actually seen the trees we may know which estimate to accept.

Aside from the beauty of most pines and the majesty of some of them,
their utility is not confined to nuts alone. Timber and sap products are
very valuable. The sugar pine in the latitude of New York is hardy, but
does not grow as rapidly as it does in the West. The same may be said of
the Jeffrey bull pine, but I shall show you some thriftier trees of this
latter species tomorrow on my property. A ve