One of the most useful kinds of pine is the _Pinus Sylvestris_ (wild pine), generally known as Scotch fir. It is this tree which produces that kind of wood so extensively useful to the carpenter under the name of _deal_. The term “deal” implies timber squared into a convenient size for exportation, and it is in the form of deals that the wood of which we are now speaking is imported into England from Norway and the Baltic. The best part of this wood is near the root; and the roots themselves are valuable for many purposes. It is of this wood that the bodies of violins and the sounding boards of musical instruments generally, are made: the grain of the wood formed by the annual layers being very straight and regular. In trees which have not arrived at maturity, there is a portion of sap-wood next the bark; this sap-wood is converted into ligneous matter in about two or three years from its formation. [Illustration: The Scotch Fir.] The Scotch Fir, or Pine, is not peculiar to Scotland, but is common to all the mountain-ranges of Europe; in low damp situations it never thrives, but delights in the exposed summits of the loftiest rocks, over which the earth is but thinly scattered; there its roots wander afar in the wildest reticulation, whilst its tall, furrowed, and often gracefully-sweeping, red and gray trunk, of enormous circumference, rears aloft its high umbrageous canopy. The fir was a very great favourite with Gilpin, who considered it, as it really is, to be under favourable circumstances, a very picturesque object in a landscape: the earnestness with which he defends its character is peculiarly forcible; he says, “It is a hardy plant, and, therefore, put to every servile office. If you wish to screen your house from the south-west wind, plant Scotch firs, and plant them close and thick. If you want to shelter a nursery of young trees, plant Scotch firs, and the phrase is, you may afterwards weed them out at your pleasure. This is ignominious. I wish not to rob society of these hardy services from the Scotch fir, nor do I mean to set it in competition with many trees of the forest, which, in their infant state, it is accustomed to shelter; all I mean is, to rescue it from the disgrace of being thought fit for nothing else, and to establish its character as a picturesque tree. For myself, I admire its foliage, both the colour of its leaf and its mode of growth. Its ramification, too, is irregular and beautiful.”