PINE TREE. Under ARIES is given a brief description of some among the many varieties of Fir trees. We will here glance at some of the more prominent uses of the Pine, which has many points of similarity to the fir.
In respect to food the pine and fir do not render much service, at least in European countries. The pine apple is a misnomer ; it is the fruit of another kind of plant, and has obtained its name from a certain resemblance to the cone of a pine tree. The Romans used the pine cones to flavour their wine; and some modern nations do the same. The Lapland ers grind the inner bark of the Scotch pine , into a kind of coarse flour, to make bread. Pine meal and oatmeal, mixed into a dough, and baked in a pan or plate, are said to make tolerable cakes. The young shoots are eaten in Siberia. Chips of pine have sometimes been used as a substitute for hops. The ker nels of the fruit of the stone pine are pleasant eating, and are dished up in various ways in France and Italy. Of the Cembra pine, the kernels yield an oil, and the shell of the ker nel yields a red dye. Spruce and spruce beer are made in the following way :—Twigs of the spruce fir are fastened into a bundle, and boiled in a copper until the bark separates. While this is doing, a given weight of oats is roasted on a hot plate, with sea biscuits or slices of bread. These ingredients are then boiled with the twigs for some time. Sugar or molasses is added; and the liquid is tuned off, leaving all the solid ingredients behind ; a little yeast is added, and spruce beer is the result. In England spruce beer is made from essence of spruce, which is prepared in America from the young twigs.
As a timber tree, it is scarcely possible to enumerate all the uses of the pine and fir.
Many of them are mentioned under ARIES. One species yields long straight timbers for the masts of ships ; another is available for part of the hull ; a third for flooring boards in a house. It is of white pine that the three magnificent American bridges are constructed, at Philadelphia, Trenton, and Boston.
It would suffice to take the Norway spruce fir as an example of the numerous uses which these trees subserve, in addition to those in which the timber is employed. When burned it yields valuable fuel and charcoal ; the ashes furnish potash; the bark is used in tanning ; the buds and young shoots yield spruce beer; the cones, boiled in whey, are used as a re medy against the scurvy ; the young shoots are used as fodder for live stock in many countries ; the floors of rooms and the path ways to churchyards are strewed with the green tops in Sweden ; the inner bark is made into baskets in Sweden and Norway ; the, long and slender rootlets are used as cords.
The pine and fir yield many remarkable substances derived from the juice or sap of the tree. Among these are resin, turpentine, tar, pitch, lamp black, &c. Their relation to each other may be stated as follows :--turpen tine is the juice of the living tree ; resin is a solid residue obtained from the turpentine ; spirit of turpentine is the clear liquid which results when the resin is removed from tur pentine ; tar is the juice of the dead tree ; and lampblack is the soot obtained by burning the above. These substances are described under their proper headings.