The Wild Pine Tree.
Pinus sylvestris.
Also see: Fir Tree - Red Fir Tree, or Pitch Tree - Larch Tree - Pitch Tree - The Wild Pine Tree - The Turpentine Tree.
A tree native of many parts of Germany, very much resembling what is called the manured pine, or simply the pine before described. It grows to be a large and tall tree; the trunk is covered with a rough brown bark, that of the branches is paler and smoother. The leaves are very narrow, and short; they grow two out of a case or husk, as in the other, and are of a bluish green colour. They differ principally in being shorter. The flowers are yellowish, and like the others very small and inconsiderable, the cones are small, brown, and hard, and sharp at the tops, they contain kernels in their shells, among the scales as the other; but they are smaller.
The kernels have the same virtues as those of the other pines, but being little, they are not regarded. The resin which flows from this tree, either naturally, or when it is cut for that purpose, is what we call common turpentine. It is a thick substance, like honey, of a brownish colour, and very strong and disagreeable smell.
When this turpentine has been distilled to make oil of turpentine, the resin which remains, is what we call common resin; if they put out the fire in time, it is yellow resin; if they continue it longer, it is black resin. They often boil the turpentine in water without distilling it for the common resin; and when they take it out half boiled for this purpose; it is what we call Burgundy pitch. And the whitish resin which is called thus, or frankincense, and is a thing quite different from olibanum, or the fine incense, is the natural resin flowing from the branches of this tree, and hardening into drops upon them, it does not differ much from the common turpentine in its nature, but is less offensive in smell.
The several kinds of pitch, tar, and resin, are principally used in plaisters and ointments. The turpentine produced from this tree also, and called common turpentine, is principally used in the same manner, the finer turpentines being given inwardly. These are procured from the turpentine tree, the larch tree, and the silver fir. The yellow resin and the black are sometimes taken inwardly in pills, and they are very good against the whites, and the runnings after gonorrhoeas; hut for this purpose it is better to boil some better sort of turpentine to the consistence and give it.
