From its very earliest infancy a young Pine has a very hard time. The Pine-cones remain on the tree for two years. The seeds inside are slowly maturing all this while, and the cone-scales are so welded or soldered together by resin and turpentine that no animal could possibly injure them. How thorough is the protection thus afforded to the young seeds, can only be understood if one takes a one-year-old unopened cone of the Scotch Fir and tries to get them out. It does not matter what is used; it may be a saw, a chisel, a hammer, or an axe: the little elastic, woody, turpentiny thing can only be split open with an infinite amount of trouble and a serious loss of calm. When these two years have elapsed, the stalk of the cone grows so that the scales are separated, and the seeds become rapidly dry and are carried away by the wind. These seeds are most beautiful and exquisitely fashioned. The seed itself is small and flattened. It contains both resin and food material, and is enclosed in a tough leathery skin which is carried out beyond the seed into a long, very thin, papery wing, which has very nearly the exact shape of the screw or propeller of a steamer. This wing or screw is intended to give the seed as long a flight in the air as possible before it reaches the ground. If you watch them falling from the tree, or throw one up into the air and observe it attentively, you will see that it twirls or revolves round and round exactly like the screw of a steamship. It is difficult to explain what happens without rather advanced mathematics, but it is just the reverse of what happens in the steamer. The machinery in the steamer turns the screw, and the pressure of the water, which is thrown off, forces the boat through the water; in the case of the pineseed, the pressure of the air on the flying wings makes the seed twirl or turn round and round, and so the seed must be a much longer time in falling. They often fly to about 80 or 100 yards away from the parent tree.