Pine, or fir, is imported into this kingdom under the various names of timber, battens, deals, laths, masts, yards, and spars, according to the size or form into which the tree is sawed. It is called _timber_ when the tree is only squared into a straight beam of the length of the trunk, and from not less than eight or nine inches square, up to sixteen or eighteen square; fifty cubic feet is a load of timber. Deals vary in length and thickness from eight to sixteen feet, eleven inches wide, and from one and a half to three and a half inches thick. Four hundred superficial feet of one and a half inch plank make a load. _Battens_ are small long pieces of fir about three inches wide and one inch thick. Masts, yards, and spars, are the trunks of small trees simply barked and topped. The pine is, generally speaking, an evergreen, and the wood becomes harder and more durable when the situation is cold, and also when the growth of the tree is slow. Norway, Sweden, the shores of the Baltic, and Canada, are the chief localities of the forests of pine. England is supplied principally from Canada, not because the timber from that country is better than that derived from the north of Europe, but because our timber duties fall heavily on the European pine, the object of the legislature being to encourage the importation of pine from our North American colonies. Almost the whole of what is now called Canada was once an immense pine forest. With respect to the Baltic region, Dr. Clarke said, that if we take up a map of Sweden, and imagine the Gulf of Bothnia to be surrounded by one contiguous unbroken forest, as ancient as the world, consisting principally of pine trees, with a few mingling birch and juniper trees, we shall have a general and tolerably correct notion of the real appearance of the country. The same writer observed, that the King of Sweden might travel from sunrise to sunset through some parts of his territories, without meeting any other of his subjects than pine trees. The Norway Spruce Fir. The species of Spruce Fir (_Pinus abies_), represented in the engraving, has been known as a British tree for more than three hundred years, but Norway seems, as far as it can be ascertained, to be its native country. It differs from the Scotch fir in general appearance, as well as in the structure of its leaves and cones. The beautiful feathery appearance of its foliage is very striking, but the extreme regularity of its form rather detracts from the beauty of a landscape when it is too often repeated; it is easily known by its long pendulous cones, as well as by its formal shape. The spruce fir is found in great abundance in all the Norwegian forests; it is also spread over the whole of the north of Europe, and part of Asia, and it occurs on most of the mountain-ranges of both these quarters of the globe; in favourable situations it attains a great height, as much at times as 150 feet. [Illustration: The Norway Spruce Fir.]