In the same species too, the variety of sex[2315] is found to constitute a considerable difference: the male is the shorter tree, and has a harder wood; while the female is taller, and bears a leaf more unctuous to the feel, smooth and free from all rigidity. The wood of the male tree is hard and awry, and consequently not so well suited for carpenters’ work; while that of the female is softer, as may be very easily perceived on the application of the axe, a test, in fact, which, in every variety, immediately shows us which trees are males; the axe in such case meeting with a greater resistance, falling with a louder noise, and being withdrawn from the wood with considerably greater difficulty: the wood of the male tree is more parched too, and the root is of a blacker hue. In the vicinity of Mount Ida, in Troas, the circumstance whether the tree grows in the mountain districts or on the sea-shore, makes another considerable difference. In Macedonia and Arcadia, and in the neighbourhood of Elis, the names of the several varieties have been totally altered, and it has not been agreed by authors which name ought to be given to each: we have, therefore, contented ourselves with employing the Roman denominations solely. The fir is the largest of them all, the female being the taller of the two; the wood, too, is softer and more easily worked. This tree is of a rounder form than the others, and its leaves are closely packed and feathered, so as not to admit of the passage of rain; the appearance, too, of the tree is altogether more cheerful. From the branches of these different varieties, with the sole exception of the larch,[2316] there hang numbers of scaly nuts of compact shape, like so many catkins. The nuts found upon the male fir have a kernel in the fore-part, which is not the case with those on the female tree. In the pitch-tree, again, these kernels, which are very small and black, occupy the whole of the catkin, which is smaller and more slender than in the other varieties; hence it is that the Greeks call this tree by the name of phthirophoron.[2317] In this tree, too, the nuts on the male are more compressed, and less moist with resin. CHAP. 20.—THE YEW.