The trunk of the Juniper tree is too small and slight to be very useful as timber; but good walking-sticks are often made from the branches and young stems. PLATE XX THE LARCH “When rosy plumelets tuft the larch.” --Tennyson. The Larch (1) was brought to Britain in the seventeenth century from its home on the high mountains of Germany, Austria, and Italy. It has taken kindly to our cheerless climate, and now covers acres of what was once barren moorland. A few years after Larches are planted the long flexible branches of the young trees meet and form a thicket into which little light or air can enter, and the weeds and heather growing round the tree roots are stifled. Each winter the Larch sheds on the bare ground millions of its tiny needle-leaves, which enrich the soil. After the young trees have grown to a certain height the forester thins the plantation; he cuts down a number of the young trees, so that those which remain may have more room to grow, and he removes all the withered branches near the ground. This allows the sunshine to reach the soil, and soon after a crop of soft, fine grass is seen carpeting the ground. Sheep and cattle can now be pastured where a short time before there grew nothing but heather and weeds. Look at a Larch plantation in winter time, and you will think that all the trees are dead. The Pines and the Firs are resting, and the Oaks and Beeches seem asleep, but their branches do not have the dead, withered look of the Larch trees. Come again early in spring, and you will see a wonderful change. These dead twigs are now a pale glossy brown, so glossy that they might have been varnished. Try to pull one, and you will find how tough and sound it is; only where the twig joins the branch can you separate it from the tree; and what a delightful smell of turpentine remains on your fingers after gathering the Larch twigs! In the trunk of this tree there are stores of turpentine, tiny lakes of it, which are of considerable value. In Italy, where the Larch trees grow to great size, small holes are bored through the trunk to the very heart of the tree, and a thin pipe is put in. Then a can is hung on the end of the pipe, and the pure turpentine juice drops steadily into the can. It is then strained, and is sold just as it comes from the tree.