[ [5] "With very few exceptions, the Pines are monœcious (having the male and female flowers on the same tree). The yellow pollen, which is very abundant, often falls in such quantities upon the branches and leaves below, and upon the neighboring plants, as to cover them; and being as light and fine as dust, it has been sometimes carried by the wind from a forest of Pines and spread upon the ground at a great distance. This affords a probable explanation of the stories which have been told, and which have been regarded with superstition or incredulity, of showers of sulphur."
Lambert, describing the common Scotch Fir, says, "The pollen is sometimes in spring carried away by the wind in such quantities as to alarm the ignorant with the notion of its raining brimstone."
[ [6] The amount of this wood annually consumed on the rail-roads in Massachusetts is valued at $200,000.
[ [7] Since writing the above, the following account has come to hand: "The Bald Cypress of Oaxana (Taxodium distichum) and the famous Chestnut of Ætna have been often cited as the giants of the vegetable kingdom. But these sovereigns are dethroned, and put into the second rank by those lately discovered in Tasmania, which leave far behind them those antique monuments of nature. Last week I went to see the two largest trees existing in the world. Both of them are on the border of a small stream tributary to the river of Northwest Bay, in the rear of Mount Wellington. They are of the species named there Swamp Gum; I and my companions (five of us) measured them. One of them had fallen; we therefore easily obtained its dimensions. We found its body two hundred and twenty feet from the ground to the first branch. The top had broken off and partly decayed, but we ascertained the entire height of the tree to have been certainly three hundred feet. We found the diameter of the base of it to be thirty feet, and at the first branch twelve feet. Its weight we estimated to be four hundred and forty tons. The other tree, now growing without the least sign of decay, resembles an immense tower rising among the humble Sassafras-trees, although very large in fact. The Gum-tree at three feet above the ground measured one hundred and two feet in circumference. In the space of a square mile, I think there were not less than one hundred of these trees, none less than forty feet in circumference. It must require several thousand years to produce the largest one."—Revue Horticole.
[ [8] "Rave," the railing of the sled.
[ [9] The adventures of a mess-mate.
[10] Old fallen trees.
[11] I should make one exception; J. G. Whittier has lifted his gifted pen for them.
[12] To the following gentlemen, viz., Messrs. Todd & Darling, J. M'Alister, Esq., of St. Stephen's, and to W. Pike, Esq., port surveyor; L. L. Lowell, Esq., and other gentlemen of Calais, I am under lasting obligations for the courteous and intelligent manner in which they responded to the various questions proposed in preparing the statistics for the above table.
[13] For the most important facts involved in the annexed statement I am chiefly indebted to the kindness of Deacon Talbot, of East Machias, and to other gentlemen engaged in the business residing at West Machias.