"The watery willow's spray, emboss'd

With oval knots of silken down;
Which soon, in form of papal crown,
Shall decorate the russet stem
With many a golden diadem."

8. The weeping or Babylonian willow, so celebrated for its drooping foliage, received its botanical name, Salix Babylonica, from Linnæus, in allusion to the 137th Psalm, where the Jews, in their captivity, are represented as sitting down by the waters of Babylon, and weeping, having hung their harps upon the willows, while their oppressors required of them one of the songs of Sion.

"By Babel's stream the captives sat,
And wept for Sion's hapless fate,
Useless their harps on willows hung,
While foes required a sacred song.'

On the willow that harp is suspended,
Oh Salem! its sound should be free;
And the hour when thy glories were ended
But left me that token of thee:

And ne'er shall its soft tones be blended

With the voice of the spoiler by me.-BYRON.

9. The poplar is a member of the Willow family. Like the willow it is easily propagated, growing readily where a green twig is thrust into moist earth. A tree called the tulip poplar, or tulip-tree, common in this country, does not belong to this family. Popular tradition states that the cross was made from the aspen or poplar-tree, and that since the Passion of our Savior the leaves have never known rest. The vibratory motion of the leaves is indeed curious, and never fails to attract the attention of the observer. It arises from the length and slenderness of the footstalks to which they are attached.

10.

"Why tremble so', broad aspen-tree'?
Why shake thy leaves ne'er ceasing'?
At rest thou never seem'st to be',

For when the air is still and clear',

Or when the nipping gale, increasing,

Shakes from thy boughs soft twilight's tear',
Thou tremblest still', broad aspen-tree',

And never tranquil seem'st to be."

11. The family of Birches is very small, being confined principally to the cooler parts of the northern hemisphere. One species, called the paper birch, furnished the Indians of America the bark of which they made their canoes. The elegance of its appearance has given it the appellation of "Lady of the Woods," and it is very properly considered the emblem of gracefulness.

12.

"Oh! come to the woodlands, 'tis joy to behold

The new-waken'd buds in our pathway unfold;

For spring has come forth, and the bland southern breeze
Is telling the tale to the shrubs and the trees,

Which, anxious to show her

The duty they owe her,

Have decked themselves gayly in em'rald and gold.

13.

But, though beautiful each, sure the fairest of all
Is yon birch, that is waving so graceful and tall :
How tender, yet bright, is the tint that is flung
O'er its delicate spray, which so lightly is hung,
That, like breeze of the mountain,

Or gush of the fountain,

It owns not of rest or of slumber the thrall."

14. The "birch-tree" is very prettily introduced in Longfellow's poem of Hiawatha, from which we make the following extract:

HIAWATHA'S CANOE.

"Give me of your bark, O birch-tree!
Of your yellow bark, O birch-tree!
Growing by the rushing river,
Tall and stately in the valley!
I a light canoe will build me,
That shall float upon the river
Like a yellow leaf in autumn,
Like a yellow water-lily.

Lay aside your cloak, O birch-tree!
Lay aside your white-skin wrapper;
For the summer time is coming,

And the sun is warm in heaven,

And you need no white-skin wrapper.'

Thus aloud cried Hiawatha
In the solitary forest,

When the birds were singing gayly,
In the moon of leaves were singing:
And the sun, from sleep awaking,
Started up, and said, 'Behold me!'
And the tree, with all its branches,
Rustled in the breeze of morning,
Saying, with a sigh of patience,
Take my cloak, O Hiawatha !'
With his knife the tree he girdled;
Just beneath its lowest branches,
Just above the roots he cut it,

Till the sap came oozing outward;
Down the trunk, from top to bottom,

Sheer he cleft the bark asunder;
With a wooden wedge he raised it,
Stripped it from the trunk unbroken."

LES. XVII.-THE CONE-BEARING, OR PINE FAMILY.

1. In the cone-bearing, or Pine family, exogenous plants assume a new character, in having their seeds uncovered. Like the elm, willow, and birch, their flowers have no corolla: in some species the pistillate and staminate flowers are on the same plant, and in others on different plants, while in other particulars their inflorescence is often irregular, and seemingly imperfect. Yet here we find some of the noblest specimens of the vegetable kingdom; and no other family is of more importance to mankind than this, whether we view it with reference to its timber or its secretions.

2. Many of the trees of this family are gigantic in size, rap

[EXOGENOUS or DICOTYLEDONOUS; Gym o perms; Aptalous.].

1. Pi'nus Canaden'sis, Hemlock or Hemlock spruce, xix. 15, (ap.), 50 f., My., N. Am. 2. Pi'nus strobus, White or Weymouth pine, xix. 15, (ap.), 50-100 f., My., N. Am. 3. Pi'nus pi'nea, Stone pine, xix. 15, (ap.), 40 f., My., Italy. 4. Pi'nus or A'bies commu'nis, Common fir or Norway spruce, xix. 15, (ap.), 100 f., A., N. Europe. 5. Pi'nus or A'bies rubra, Red spruce, xix. 15, (ap.), 50 f., A., N. Am. 6. La'rix ce'drus, Cedar of Lebanon, xix. 15, (ap.), 60 f., A., W. Asia. 7. Cupre'sus thyoides, White cedar or cypress, xix. 15, (ap.), 20 f., A., N. Am. 8. Thuja occidenta'lis, American arbor-vitæ, xix. 15, (ap.), 25 f., A., N. Am. 9. Junip'erus Virginia'na, Red cedar, xx. 15, (ap.), 30 f., My.Jn., N. Am. 10. Tax'us bacca'ta, Common yew, xx. 15, (ap.), 20 f., A., Britain.

id in growth, noble in aspect, robust in constitution; and they form a considerable proportion of woods or plantations in cultivated countries, and of forests where nature remains, in temperate countries, in a savage state. Their timber, in commerce, is known under the names of deal, fir, pine, and cedar; and is principally the wood of the spruce, the larch, the Scotch fir, the white or Weymouth pine of Vermont, and the Virginian cedar. Some of the pines of Northwest America are stupendous trees, attaining a height of two hundred and fifty feet. Those products called naval stores, such as tar, turpentine, pitch, together with numerous resins and balsams, are obtained from the Pine family.

3. The cone-bearing trees are not only of great value in ship-building, but in all structures in which durability is desired. From the wood of the juniper the Greeks carved the images of their gods; the wood of the arar-tree of Barbary is considered by the Turks indestructible, and on this account they use it for the ceilings and floors of their mosques; and

the gates of Constantinople, famous for having stood from the time of Constantine to that of Pope Eugene IV., a period of eleven hundred years, were of cypress.

The cedar of Leba

non is, perhaps, the most celebrated tree of the whole family, yet it is now scarce on Mount Lib'ănus, whose forests seem never to have recovered from the havoc made by Solomon's four score thousand hewers. The seeds of the stone pine, which are as sweet as almonds, are eaten throughout Italy. 4. As ornamental lown-trees, the larch, the spruce, the firs, the cypress, are unequaled; and the hemlockspruce and arbor vitæ are great favorites for hedges. Well-grown belts of evergreens, which

"in conic forms arise,

And with a pointed spear divide the skies,"

La'rix pen'dula,

Black Larch, or
American Tam-

afford a fine protection for gardens in arack.

exposed situations, and are often planted, in the Northern States, for that purpose. The fact that a plaintive sound, solemn and sad, is produced by the passage of the wind through the leaves of the pine, is notorious to all observers. Virgil alludes to this music

in his eighth Eclogue:

5. The poet Hood has, with characteristic humor, described a group of pines, with interlacing branches, writhing in the storm like Laocoon2 in the folds of the serpents, and weeping gummy tears.

"The pines-those old gigantic pines,
That writhe-recalling soon

The famous human group that writhes
With snakes in wild festoon-

In ramous3 wrestlings interlaced,

A forest Laocoon'

Like Titans of primeval girth

By tortures overcome,

Their brown enormous limbs they twine,

Bedewed with tears of gum.'

6. Of the associations connected with this family, it may be remarked that the cypress especially, on account of the gloomy hue of its leaves, was esteemed by the ancients a suitable ornament of their burial-places, and that it is often alluded to in poetry as the emblem of mourning.

Peace to the dust that in silence reposes

Beneath the dark shades of cypress and yew;
Let spring deck the spot with her earliest roses,

And heaven wash their leaves with its holiest dew.-PIERPONT.

Dark tree! still sad when others' grief is fled,
The only constant mourner of the dead.-BYRON.

GYM'-NO-SPERMS are plants that have na

- ked seeds, such as the pines.

here departs from the classical pronuncia tion, which is Lä-o'-o-ON. See p. 70 and 72

LÄ-O-CÖÖN'. It will be seen that the poet 3 RA'-MOUS, branched; full of branches.

LESSON XVIII.-TO A PINE-TREE.

1. FAR up on Katahdin thou towerest,

Purple-blue with the distance, and vast;
Like a cloud o'er the lowlands thou lowerest,
That hangs poised on a lull in the blast,
To its fall leaning awful.

2. Spite of winter thou keeps't thy green glory,
Lusty father of Titans past number!
The snow-flakes alone make thee hoary,
Nestling close to thy branches in slumber,
And thee mantling with silence.

3. Thou alone know'st the splendor of winter,
'Mid thy snow-silver'd, hushed precipices,
Hearing crags of green ice groan and splinter,
And then plunge down the muffled abysses
In the quiet of midnight.

4. Thou alone know'st the glory of summer,
Gazing down on thy broad seas of forest-
On thy subjects, that send a proud murmur
Up to thee, to their sachem, who towerest
From thy bleak throne to heaven.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

THE PINE-APPLE. [ENDOGENOUS: see next page.]

Bromelia ana'nas, the Pineapple, vi. 1, pu., 4 f., J.-D., S. America. This fruit, says Loudon, "may, without hesitation, be pronounced the first in the world, though it has not been known in Europe above two centuries, and has only been cultivated about a century as a fruit plant in Britain." First discovered in Brazil, it passed thence to the East Indies, where it has long been successfully cultivated. Many varieties of the pine-apple have

been produced by cultivation. In the West Indies and South America, one species is used for fencing pasture-lands on account of its prickly leaves.