"See, the needles hang down like a spray, just as he said.
You know the wood has a peculiar resonance and the Mexicans make musical
instruments of it."
"It's a graceful pine," approved Ethel Brown. "What a lot of pines there
are."
"We are so accustomed about here to white pines that the other kinds
seem strange, but in the South there are several kinds," contributed
Dorothy. "The needles of the long leaf pine are a foot long and much
coarser than these white pine needles. Don't you remember, I made some
baskets out of them?"
The Ethels did remember.
"Their green is yellower. The tree is full of resin and it makes the
finest kind of kindling."
"Is that what the negroes call 'light wood'?" asked Della.
"Yes, that's light wood. In the fields that haven't been cultivated for
a long time there spring up what they call in the South 'old field
pines' or 'loblolly pines.' They have coarse yellow green needles, too,
but they aren't as long as the others. There are three needles in the
bunch."
"Don't all the pines have three needles in the bunch?" asked Margaret.
"Look at this white pine," she said, pulling down a bunch off a tree
they were passing. "It has five; and the 'Table Mountain pine' has only
two."
"Observant little Dorothy!" exclaimed Roger.
"O, I know more than that," laughed Dorothy. "Look hard at this white
pine needle; do you see, it has three sides, two of them white and one
green? The loblolly needle has only two sides, though the under is so
curved that it looks like two; and the 'Table Mountain' has two sides.
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