pine, gives an exquisite attar; the Huon pine
is admirable for its furniture wood; so is
the celery-topped pine. The Laplanders and
Kamtschadales convert the inner bark of the
wild pine into bread—excellent stuff for
fattening swine; and to this day strips of
pine are used by the poorer people in the
north of Scotland in the place of candles.
The bleak, icy North, which gives us so little,
sends us down pine-trees for our gallant
ships; and many a life has been saved from
the hungry wolves by virtue of the turpentine
in a blazing pine branch. The kernels
of the stone-pine were once in much request,
until pistachio nuts sent them out of fashion;
tar and tar-water—a panacea in our fathers'
time—both come from this group; the
Siberian stone-pine gives a very beautiful
furniture wood; the cedar of Lebanon, one
of the pine order, needs no description, either
in form or in properties; common resin comes
from the Norway spruce fir; the juniper,
unfortunately, makes bad gin; and the savin-
tree (juniperus sabina) is a powerful medicine.

The birch is another useful tree. To the
rising generation, not quite so useful as when
we ourselves were young; birch-rods having
gone out of date. Birch makes pretty
furniture, especially bedroom furniture for
unpretending houses. It also makes most
of the sabots or wooden shoes of our neighbours.
The Laplanders use the bark only, not
the wood, for their foot-coverings, which then
they braid and ornament gaily. The bark
tans moderately well, and dyes a good
yellow; and birch wine is not unpalateable
drink in days of drought. From an Indian
species, writing-paper can be obtained, and
the outer part of the paper-birch makes the
canoe of the Canadian Indian,—the same
canoe which we have seen before sewn
together with thongs cut out of the moose-
deer's hide. The peculiar scent of Russia
leather is owing to common birch oil; and
from several varieties you can get a kind of
sugar.

Then the furniture woods; what marble
surpasses some of the finer kinds ? Look at
the rich flowing lines of walnut and mahogany;
and what is more beautiful than
the black walnut of North America?
Maple, too, is very lovely, particularly the
sugar-maple of Canada—our bird's eye and
curled maples. So is rosewood, its antipode;
the one so fair and tender, the other like a
dark-skinned African girl who has caught a
warmth and flush from the sun which makes
the whole world admire; they are the
Rowena and Rebecca of the forest. And
what a beautiful wood is the snake-wood,
or brosimum, and as strange as beautiful.
And is there any need to praise the colour
and the veinings of cherry wood? And the
blackened old bog-oak of Ireland,—the old
semi-fossil, dug up in the very process of
transformation, and applied to human uses—
to making library furniture and women's
ornaments, harps of Erin, shamrock bracelets,
brooches, and the like; and the brave old
hickory, congener with the walnut, and pioneer
of American civilization, which (when white) is
fashioned into handles for axes and saws that
make the dark forests ring with the sounds
of human labour; some of the palms—when
cut and polished, singularly beautiful in their
veinings; the spindle-tree, formerly special
for spindles, so smooth and white is its firm
grain; ebony; satin-wood; the noble old
oak, both plain and knotted; the rich gold-
brown box-wood; even beech, and elm, and
homely deal when highly polished; the dark
yellow iron-tree, sweetenia chloroxylon, a
mahogany, and as hard and uncompromising
as its name—are they not all as beautiful
in their way as verde antico and red
porphyry, scagliola, grey marble, or slate?

From the pith of rushes are obtained candlewicks.
Defend us from that rush-pith in its
tube of tallow, glimmering ghastly through
those odious pierced shades so dear to timorous
housekeepers! No light can well be
worse than this; and yet it is better than
none,—and we must remember that when
rushlights were, Child and Price were not.
From the tallow-tree of China, a spurge, does
man also get a light for the darkness of his
night. The seeds of the tallow-tree give a
certain substance which the Celestials
convert into their Belmonts and short sixes, and
burn to their great enjoyment; and the
peat-bogs of Ireland, under Mr. Young's
manipulation, are yielding us paraffine which
threatens to displace Belmont, spermaceti,
and wax itself in time, and to do away
with Australian mutton for ever. Speaking
of spurges, we might as well say that both
croton and castor oil come from that tribe,
as well as cassava and a kind of caoutchoue;
and not a few poisons. Our box-tree is a
spurge; so is the pretty sun-lover, the
crozophora tinctoria, which gives that beautiful
blue dye, the turnsol of commerce.

The word dye leads us into a wide field.
First there is the madder, a bed-straw, which
colours even the bones of the eater, red; next
perhaps in order of chromatic supremacy,
comes saffron—the crocus sativus—so
exquisite in its golden colour; fustic, a yellow
dye not quite so rich as saffron, comes from
a certain kind of mulberry; while Brazil
wood, logwood, indigo, the Japan dyes, and
woad waxen, or dyer's green weed, are all
products of the pulse tribe, or leguminosæ.
So are catechu and divi-divi, both used for
tanning; as is the bark of the acacia arabica.
The buckthorn gives a dye which stains
Turkish and morocco leather yellow; it
gives also the syrup of buckthorn, well-
known in country pharmacy; rouge is from
safflowers; henna, so celebrated in the poetry
of the harem, is a paint got from a loosestrife;
kohl is from a plant called sterculia;
and one of the persicaries gives a blue dye.