practically untouched by the axe, and contains many very old trees of peculiar habit.
The Laricio grows with extreme slowness in the mountains of Corsica, trees 40 inches in diameter averaging about 360 years old, and those over 5 feet in diameter are often as much as 700 years.
The timber of young trees is valueless in Corsica, as it contains practically only sapwood, which rapidly decays on exposure to the air. The sapwood is white in colour, and always considerable in thickness, varying on an average from 8 inches in young trees (77 years old) to 2 to 3 inches in old trees (250 years old and upwards), The heartwood, which is reddish brown, only develops in quantity when the trees attain an advanced age, exceptionally at 120 to 150 years, usually at 300 years. At the latter age the trees average 3 feet in diameter, and are considered to be mature and at the most profitable period for felling. Most of the timber is exported in the form of logs to Italy, where it is much esteemed, and is used for shipbuilding purposes generally. The logs are squared in the forest, all the sapwood being chipped off except a little at the four corners. Saleable logs must be at least 23 feet in length, and have a minimum section at the small end of 1 square foot. They fetch at Bastia, after a long haulage by road and railway, 36 to 4o francs per cubic metre, or about rod. to 11d. per cubic foot. A small proportion of the timber in the forests is cut up into planks and joists for local use. The timber is very strong but heavy, and often contains a great deal of resin; when of the first quality it is considered to be as good as American pitch pine. It is very seldom used in France, and the reasons for this are not very clear.
I could obtain no information as to the collection of the seed of Laricio in Corsica, though I made inquiries when visiting the forests and also at the Con- servator’s office in Ajaccio. Mr. M.L. de Vilmorin, however, kindly informs me in a letter that the annual collection amounts to about three or four tons, of which his firm disposes of about one-half. The main localities for collecting are near Corte and Calacuccia, and at Vivario, which is not far from Vizzavona. The cones are put in the ovens which the villagers use for drying chestnuts, and as the amount of heat is not regulated with any precision, the seed is often over-heated. Though the crop of cones in the forest varies very much in different years, there has been no difficulty so far in procuring always a quantity of seed sufficient to meet the demand.
In Sardinia the Corsican pine is recorded from only one locality, the valley of the Flumini Maggiore, where it was collected by Moris.
CaLabrian Pine.—In Sicily the Corsican pine is common, according to Schouw,’ on Mount Etna, where it forms woods between 4000 and 6000 feet. It is, however, in Calabria, in Sila and Aspromonte, that Laricio occurs in abundance, and there is little doubt that the tree here is identical with that of Corsica. Schouw,’ who compared specimens from the botanical garden at Naples with the large Corsican pine growing in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, is convinced of their absolute identity. Longo, who has recently written an article® on the flora
1 Parlatore, Fl. Italiana, iv. 53 (1867). Moris’s specimens, though without flowers or fruit, are probably Laricio, according to Parlatore.
2 Ann. Sci. Nat., III Ser., iii. 234 (1845).
3 Annali di Botanica, iii, 1–17, tt. 1–6 (1905).
