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It is bright green in spring, and in the autumn it retains its beautiful ruddy-tinted leaves until the end of winter, when they are again replaced by the new growth. The warm tint of the beech contrasts beautifully with the bright green of the coniferae, especially of the Lawsoniania and the Douglassi the latter being one of the finest accessions to our list of conifers.
I stand upon thy banks where thou leapest the rocks of Saint Antoine, and with bold frothing current cleavest thy way to the south. Already I note a change in the aspect of thy shores. The coniferae have disappeared, and thou art draped with a deciduous foliage of livelier hue. Oaks, elms, and maples, mingle their frondage, and stretch their broad arms over thee.
From this point its course was pursued through a forest of magnificent trees. These trees still retained their verdure, notwithstanding the advanced season, for they belonged to the family of "coniferae," which is spread over all the regions of the globe, from northern climates to the tropics.
On the other band, the evergreen coniferae, which were growing among the larches, and therefore in the same conditions of exposure, were almost entirely free from frost. The contrast between the verdure of the leaves of the evergreens and the crystalline splendor of those of the larches was strikingly beautiful.
We cannot presume to judge from the few cedars which still remain, what the habit and appearance of the tree may have been, when it covered the slopes of Libanus, and seeing how very variable Coniferae are in habit, we may assume that its surviving specimens give us no information on this head.
The trees and shrubs planted about the grounds were carefully selected. The coniferae class were my special favourites. I arranged them so that their natural variety of tints should form the most pleasing contrasts. In this respect I introduced the beech-tree with the happiest effect.
Occasionally some of the calamite brakes and forests of Sigillariae and Coniferae were exposed in the flood season, or sometimes, perhaps, by slight elevatory movements to the denuding action of the river or the sea.
This is the great family of the coniferae, which although differing in many respects from the highly organised dicotyledons of the present day, yet resembled them in some respects, especially in the formation of an annual ring of woody growth. The conifers are those trees which, as the name would imply, bear their fruit in the form of cones, such as the fir, larch, cedar, and others.
There is rice too, vast fields of rice upon its marshy borders; but it is not the pearly grain of the South. Here for three-fourths of the year the sun is feeble, and the aspect that of winter. For months the cold waters are bound up in an icy embrace. The earth is covered with thick snow, over which rise the needle-leafed coniferae the pines, the cedars, the spruce, and the hemlock.
The class of living coniferae is well known for the various oils which it furnishes naturally, and for others which its representatives yield on being subjected to distillation.
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