“‘Then you call those cone-shaped things fruit?’
“‘Certainly; what else should they be?’
“‘Oh! I thought those were the seed.’
“‘So are they, and the fruit as well. In botany we have no such word as fruit. What you call fruit is in some trees the seed. In all species of nuts, for instance, the fruit and the seed are one and the same thing—that is to say, the kernel of the nut is both fruit and seed. So it is with leguminous plants, as beans and peas. In other trees, however, the fruit is a substance covering and enclosing the seed, as the pulp of the apple, the pear, and the orange. Now, with regard to the pines, they are nut-bearing trees, and their seed is at the same time their fruit.’
“‘But, mamma, you do not mean that any one could eat those rough things that grow upon pine-trees?’
“‘Those rough things you speak of are the cones. They are only the sheaths that protect the seeds during a certain period of the year. They open as nuts do, and then you will find a kernel inside which is the true fruit.’
“‘But I have tasted that, too—it is quite bitter.’
“‘You have tasted that of the common pine, and you say true of it; but there are many species of pine-trees, whose seeds are not only edible, but pleasant to the taste, and wholesome as an article of food.’
“‘What pines, mamma?’
“‘Several species are known. Several new ones have been discovered of late years, and in this very Desert. Perhaps in no part of the world is found a greater variety of these valuable trees, than in the mountainous countries which border upon and lie within the Great American Desert. There is one species in California called “Colorado” by the Spaniards—which means red, because their wood, when sawn up, is of a reddish colour. Trees of this kind are the largest in the world; they are often over 300 feet in height! Only think of a tree 300 feet high, when the tallest we saw in the Mississippi Valley was not much over half that. Yet there are whole forests of these upon the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. There is another species almost as large on these same mountains. It has been called by botanists pinus Lambertiana. It is more remarkable, however, for the size of its cones, which are of the enormous length of eighteen inches—a foot and a half! Fancy how singular a sight it must be—one of these gigantic trees with cones hanging from its branches larger than sugar-loaves!’