"This isn't a pine tree, is it?" asked Malcolm, touching a small tree with very slender branches, some of them as slight as willow-withes and covered with grayish-red bark, while that on the main stem was bluish gray.
THE LARCH.
"It is a species of pine," was the reply, "because it belongs to the Coniferae, or cone-producing, family; but it is not an evergreen, although it ranks as such. This is the larch--generally called in New England by its Indian name of hacmatack--and it differs from the other pines in its crowded tufts of leaves, which, after turning to a soft leather-color, fall, in New England, early in November. The cones, too, are very small."
"What's the use of cones, any way?" asked Malcolm as he picked up some very large ones under the white and pitch pines.
FOLIAGE OF THE
LARCH (Larix
Americana).
"Their principal use," replied his governess, "is to contain the seeds of future trees: they are the fruit of the pine; but they have a number of uses besides, which you shall hear about this evening."
"The little cones at Hemlock Lodge are pretty," said Edith, "and Clara and me play with 'em. We play they're a orphan-'sylum."
"'Clara and I,' dear," corrected Miss Harson, smiling at the "orphan-'sylum," while Malcolm said he had never thought of that before, and it must be what they were meant for. Edith could not quite understand whether this was fun or earnest, but Miss Harson shook her head at Malcolm and called him "naughty boy."