“But you cannot have one part without taking it all; almost everything, you see, has a pleasant side.—­’The peasant finds no limit to the use of the pine.  Of its bark he makes the little canoe which is to carry him along the river; it is simple in its construction, and as light as possible.  When he comes within safe distance of one of those gushing, foaming cataracts that he meets with in his course, he pushes his canoe to land and carries it on his shoulders until the danger is past; then he launches it again, and paddles merrily onward.  Not a single nail is used in his canoe:  the planks are tightly secured together by a natural cordage made of the roots of the pine.  He splits them of the right thickness, and with very little preparation they form exactly the material he needs.’”

Malcolm evidently had some idea of making a canoe of this kind, but he became discouraged when his governess reminded him that he could not cut down trees, and that his father would prefer having them left standing.  It did not seem necessary to speak of any difficulties in the way of putting the boat together.

“Another use for the fir is to light up the poor hut of the peasant.  ’He splits up the branches into laths and makes them into torches.  If he wants a light, he takes one of the laths and kindles it at the fire; then he fixes it in a rude frame, which serves him for a candlestick.  The light is very brilliant while it lasts, but is soon spent, and he is in darkness again.  The same use is made of the pine.  It is no unusual circumstance, in the Scotch pine-woods, to come upon a tree with the trunk scooped out from each side and carried away:  the cottager has been to fetch material for his candles.  But this somewhat rough usage does not hurt the tree, and it continues green and healthy.’  In our Southern States pine-fat with resin is called lightwood, and is used for the same purpose.”

“That’s an easy way of getting candles,” said Clara.

“Easy, perhaps, compared with the trouble of moulding them,” replied Miss Harson, “but I do not think we should fancy either way of preparing them.”

“Is there anything to tell about the spruce tree?” asked Malcolm.

“It is too much like the fir,” replied his governess, “to have any very distinct character; but there are species here, known as the white and black spruce, besides the hemlock.”

But the children thought that hemlock was hemlock:  how did it come to be spruce?

“Because it has the family features—­leaves solitary and very short; cones pendulous, or hanging, with the scales thin at the edge; and the fruit ripens in a single year.  The hemlock-spruce, as it is sometimes called, is, I think, the most beautiful of the family.  ’It is distinguished from all the other pines by the softness and delicacy of its tufted foliage, from the spruce by its slender, tapering branchlets and the smoothness of its limbs, and from the balsam-fir by its small terminal cones,