for a little while, just to let in the pollen; as soon as that is done they shut themselves close up again, like a box, over the little seeds, and there the cones hang on the under side of the branch in pairs, firm compact things, a fortification in themselves, each scale serving to guard not only its own charge of twin seeds, but those of all the rest, for one scale of a fir-cone cannot be pulled off without spoiling the appearance of the whole cone.

The Scottish fir, and some others, have scales which are actually little wedges of solid wood, which are not easy to pull apart till the seed is ripe, when they fall down and open of themselves. The Weymouth pine and silver fir have perhaps the nicest cones, long and narrow, with even brown scales, fitting one over another like armour, and ranged in a spiral winding line, not in rings, but each single scale growing a little higher than the last. They are the pleasantest to pick up, and look prettiest when burning, when the main part of the cone is black and every scale has a flame-coloured border, and then it goes off with a crack which makes you start, and the turpentine lights up into a clear flame. The leaves, like those of all evergreens, make a beautiful cracking and hopping, as every one knows who likes burning the Christmas holly on Candlemas Day; I believe the reason is that there are little air-vessels between the two coats of the evergreen leaves, and the sound is made as the vessels burst and the air breaks out. How pleasant is the resinous smell of the burning fir branch! and it is said that the smell of the fresh boughs in an American forest is delightful.

The silver fir is so called because the leaves are white on the under side. The Scottish fir is more branching than its northern brethren, it has very long leaves, more

like threads than needles, and growing two and two, spreading out like a pair of compasses.

And what shall we say of the uses of pines? Deal boards, pitch, rosin, turpentine; never mind all that, we don't want such great things in a chapter on flowers, and you learnt it long ago in your school reading books, or in Harry and Lucy you have read of the slide of Alpnach.

There is one river in Norway where the pine trees are thrown in at the source and left to find their own way to Bergen, with a direction to their owners on their trunk (like other travellers), and down they come with the stream, tumbling over waterfalls, whirling round rocks, scrambling and dashing along as best they can, till they are fairly caught at Bergen, and stowed in their master's timber yard. In some parts of America the floors are strewn with a carpet of young fresh pine shoots, as here in old times the floors were covered with fresh rushes.

The greatest and most noble of all the needle trees is the glorious Cedar of Lebanon, the tree which formed the beams of Solomon's Temple. It is not tall, but a very wide-spreading magnificent tree, even as we see it here, and in its native home no one can look at the broad old trunks, few and shattered as they are, without reverence. for them as for something sacred. The wood does not decay, and is so closely grained that no insect harms it. In the very old times this cedar grove of Lebanon had very much larger trees. It seems that such trees will only grow on a sort of soil made by glaciers on a mountain side, and these large cedars thus grew. Some were hewn for the Temple, and floated in rafts to Joppa, to be taken to Jerusalem. Afterwards Sennacherib, the King of Nineveh,

boasted, as we know, that he would "cut down the choice fir trees thereof." He said so in his letter to Hezekiah; and some writing has been found on the rocks of Lebanon boasting of what he had done. No trees since, at Lebanon, have equalled those he cut down, though still they grow on the hill.

And we may guess what those cedars were from the trees that grow in the same sort of soil in Western America, pine trees whose branches begin at such a height overhead that you seem looking to the sky. One hollow one, that lies dead on the ground, forms a tunnel through which a man can ride on horseback. A slice cut across the trunk of one forms the floor of a great ballroom. The bark of one was brought to England to be a wonder in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. But when fire broke out near, it ran up the hollow like a chimney and brought destruction on all around. It is impossible not to be sorry that these huge trees of the West were not used like those of the East, for God's glory instead of man's curiosity, but there are several of the giants still standing in good health, and whoever sees them ought to feel that they make a mighty temple showing forth the beauty of His works.

The larch grows almost as far north as the fir, and like it bears cones and needles; but it is, as far as I know, the only sort of needle tree which is deciduous, that is, which lets its leaves fall. Its leaves are far more tender than those of its companions, and have no double coat, so that they are not fit to stand the winter. If you wish to see anything beautiful, go in the spring and look at the young larch blossom, the exquisite little crimson catkin of scales, fit to be a tree in a fairy forest, and afterwards at the soft purple conelet before it grows to the hard,

green, knobby, scaly thing of autumn, or the brown one you may pick up now.

The cypress is another cone-bearer, not English, but used in Italy to shade and ornament churchyards with its dark spires.

CHAPTER XIII

RULE OF FIVE AND FOUR, AND RULE OF THREE

No, I am not going to set you a sum, but to tell you the two great rules by which you may understand more about plants. Every plant we have thought about has its blossoms, with parts going in fives and fours, or else in threes, except, of course, the ferns and mosses.

Primroses go by fives, pinks by twice fives, foxgloves by fours, heath by twice fours, speedwell by half fours. Again, crocuses go by threes, and daffodils by twice threes.

Now every plant that goes by fives and fours comes up at first out of the ground with two seed leaves or cotyledons, as you see mustard and cress or lupins do.

Every plant that follows the rule of three grows up in one round point, like a head of asparagus, or sometimes like a tusk or tooth. Don't you know how glad we are to see that little spike or tooth in the snowdrop clumps in the spring? and how fat and round the asparagus looks with its scaly top, so that the French call it a thumb ?

There is another difference. The asparagus, as you know, when it is not eaten, grows taller but not stouter. None of this three-kind grow larger in girth, but only in