Another group of these white pines that stood close to some only less picturesque red pines on the shores of a pond deep in the Adirondacks emphasized again for me one May day the majesty of this beneficent friend of mankind; and yet another old pine monarch against the sunset sky pointed the westward way from the picturesque Cornell campus, and alas! also pointed the danger to even this one unreplaceable tree when modern "enterprise" constructs a trolley line on a scenic route, ruthlessly destroying the very features that make the route desirable, rather than go to any mechanical trouble!
My readers will easily recall for themselves just the same sort of "old pine" groups they have record of on memory's picture-gallery, and will, I am sure, agree with me as to the informality, dignity and true beauty of these survivors of the forest, all of which deserve to be appreciatively cared for, against any encroachment of train, trolley or lumberman.
I am ashamed to say I have not yet seen the blossoms of the white pine, which the botanists tell us come in early spring, minute and light brown, to be followed by the six-inch-long cones which mature the second year. I promise my camera that another spring it shall be turned toward these shy blossoms.
[Illustration: The long-leaved pines of the South]
[Illustration: The fountain-like effect of the young long-leaved pine]
Any one who has traveled south of Virginia, even by the Pullman way of not seeing, cannot fail to have noted the lovely green leaf-fountains springing up from the ground along the railroads. These are the young trees of the long-leaved or Southern yellow pine. How beautiful they are, these narrow leaves of vivid green, more than a foot long, drooping gracefully from the center outward, with none of the stiffness of our Northern species! In some places they seem to fairly bubble in green from all the surface of the ground, so close are they. And the grand long-leaved pine itself, maintained in lusty vigor above these greeneries, is a tree of simple dignity, emphasized strongly when seen at its best either in the uncut forest, or in a planted avenue. We of the North are helping to ruin the next generation of Southern pines by lavish use, for decorations, of the young trees of about two feet high, crowded with the long drooping emerald needles. The little cut-off pine lasts a week or two, in a parlor--it took four or five years to grow!