No notice of the Pines, however fragmentary and superficial, could be justified if it did not include a reference to the Pinaster or Cluster Pine (Pinus maritima). British tourists on their journey to or from Biarritz, Pau, etc., can scarcely fail to have noticed the immense plantations of this tree through which the railway runs between Bayonne and Bordeaux. For nearly 100 miles the woodland is well-nigh continuous, consisting almost exclusively of this species, and covering an area of nearly two million acres "perhaps" says Mr. Elwes, "the most extensive forest ever created by the hand of man." Estimating the capital sunk in planting, road-making, etc., since 1855 at upwards of £2,000,000, M. Huffel put its value in 1904 at £18,000,000, the annual revenue from timber, turpentine and resin being then more than half a million sterling—equal to a rent of about 7s. an acre. In a wild state, the landes thus occupied were practically worthless for agriculture.
Although the pinaster is a native of the Mediterranean region, it agrees admirably with the soil and climate of the British Isles, thrusting its boughs out in the teeth of severe wind exposure, growing to great height and bulk and ripening abundant seed. Yet it is a despised tree with us, few landowners being at pains to plant it now, although a considerable number seem to have been planted about the end of the eighteenth century and early in the nineteenth.
The Silver Firs
While the wide range of the English language over the globe is of considerable advantage to commerce, and possibly to some other interests, it is the source of some perplexity when, as in treating of natural history or botany, precise terms have to be employed. Thus in the United Kingdom most people know exactly what tree is meant by the silver fir; but in the United States, with a population well on to double that of the British Isles, the silver fir is understood to mean quite a different species—namely, Abies venusta, a native of California, not suitable for forestry purposes in this country. In like manner, though there is no true cedar indigenous to America, there are half-a-dozen trees there known as red cedar, white cedar, and so forth. English, being a living language, is still fluid; meanings shift with changes of environment; to secure precision, therefore, science must have recourse to classical Greek and Latin, which, being dead languages, change no more.
The group of evergreen conifers, then, collectively known as silver firs, consists of about thirty species comprised in the genus Abies; and these are most easily recognised by the position of the mature cones, which stand erect on the branches, whereas in the other group of true firs, the spruces (Picea), they are pendulous in all except two or three Asiatic species. Another mark of distinction is the circular base of the needle or leaf, which, when it falls or is pulled from the branch, leaves a perfectly circular scar; while in the spruces the leaves are set upon little pegs which remain on the twig when the leaves fall. The grey or silvery bands on the under side of the leaf, although it is from these that the tree is called the silver fir, are not an exclusive badge of the genus; for some of the other firs, notably the Manchurian spruce, display similar colouring.
The tree known in this country as the silver fir par excellence (Abies pectinata) is the loftiest European tree. Probably the extreme height had been attained by one grown in a Bosnian virgin forest, measured by Mr. Elwes after it had fallen, "over 180 feet long, whose decayed top must have been at least 15 or 20 feet more."
The silver fir is not a native of Britain, having been introduced about the beginning of the seventeenth century. Its range extends over southern and central Europe, from the Pyrenees on the west to the borders of Wallachia on the east. Nevertheless, it has found a congenial home in these islands, where, if it had ever received scientific handling, it would have been far more highly esteemed for its timber than it now is. Such handling we have never given it; the silver fir has been used indiscriminately in mixed plantation, where, outstripping every other tree in stature, it loses its leader, and sends up a number of heads which get battered by the wind, becoming ragged and unsightly.
Now if these noble firs, instead of being scattered among trees of inferior height, were planted in close forest, so as to be drawn up with clean boles to a single leader, they would protect each other from the gale. Then might be seen something of the true character of the silver fir as it is developed in such forests as that of the Vosges, in Eastern France, where a tract fifty miles long is clad principally with this species, or in the Jura, where a forest of silver fir 10,600 acres in extent yields annually 170 cubic feet of timber per acre felled. British foresters and wood merchants set a low value on such timber as the silver fir produces in this country; and small blame to them, because, grown as we are in the habit of growing it, branchy and full of great knots, it is almost worthless; but in some districts of Europe where silver forest is well managed and felled in rotation, the deals are more sought after and command a readier market than spruce. The thinnings make excellent pitwood, and although, like spruce, the timber is not naturally durable enough for outdoor purposes, it can be made so by creosote treatment.