" He showed me a fir-cone he had picked up from the path, with the sharp end cut short and a thorn stuck in the middle.

" In the neighbourhood of Torquay, fir-cones are designated oysters, and in Sussex the Arabis is called "snow-on-the-mountain," and "snow-in-summer."

From Egypt the Lotus was carried to Assyria, and Layard found it among fir-cones and honeysuckles on the later sculptures of Nineveh.

A Northern pinewood once we knew, My dear, when younger by some lustres, Where little painted crossbills flew And pecked among the fir-cone clusters; They hobnobbed and sidled In coats all aflame, While young Autumn idled,

There was not even the prowling of night animals to vex the rest of Mrs. Maloney; for in previous camps it had often been her peculiar affliction that she heard the porcupines scratching against the canvas, or the squirrels dropping fir-cones in the early morning with a sound of miniature thunder upon the roof of her tent.

The soil in which they grow here is half pitch pavement, half loose brown earth, and over both, shallow pools of water, which will become much deeper in the wet season; and all about float or lie their pretty fruit, the size of an apple, and scaled like a fir-cone.

The implements are the ball, which is hollow and of leather, about half the size of a football, and a cylinder studded with spikes, rather like a huge fir-cone or pine-apple, which is placed over the wrist and forearm to hit the ball with; and the game is much as in tennis, only there is no central net: merely a line.

The size and shape may vary, as a Canadian axe differs from a Scotch axe; some are short and stout and have a sharp edge for shelling seeds; some are longer and fine-pointed, for picking worms and caterpillars out of their hiding-places; some a little hooked at their points, and one, that of the crossbill, with points crossed for picking the small seeds out of fir-cones; but all are practically the same tool.

On the shallow, sun-warmed steps he sat playing with fir-cones, fingering their scaly curves and sniffing their dry, brown fragrance.

That ring-dove, who was cooing half a mile away, has hushed his moan; that flock of long-tailed titmice, which were twinging and pecking about the fir-cones a few minutes since, are gone: and now there is not even a gnat to quiver in the slant sun-rays.

A kind of tabernacle, in the centre of the square, protected the great bronze fir-cone, which was formerly supposed to have crowned the summit of Hadrian's Mausoleum, the Castle of S. Angelo.

Kentish lawn in the spring, birds singing in the lilacs, and some one in a muslin frock waiting patiently beneath a certain cedarnot the one in the picture, I know, but" "I was not waiting," she said indignantly, "I was picking fir-cones for the schoolroom fire" "Fir-cones, my dear, do not grow on cedars, and schoolroom fires were not made in June in my young days.

Kentish lawn in the spring, birds singing in the lilacs, and some one in a muslin frock waiting patiently beneath a certain cedarnot the one in the picture, I know, but" "I was not waiting," she said indignantly, "I was picking fir-cones for the schoolroom fire" "Fir-cones, my dear, do not grow on cedars, and schoolroom fires were not made in June in my young days.

Instead of a fruit-form a fir-cone appears, or a pine-apple or other fruit in an almost naturalistic form.

I wish that when old Phoebus drops Behind yon hedgehog-haunted copse And high and bright the Northern Crown Is standing over White Horse Down I could be sitting by the fire In that my Land of Heart's Desire A fire of fir-cones and a log And at my feet a fubsy dog In Robinwood!

The result is that I can visualise anything and everythingspeak of a larch-bud or a fir-cone, and there it is before methe little rosy fragrant tuft, or the glossy rectangular squares of the cone.

Raby's wife could hardly believe it when she saw the bright sovereign laid on the broad top of one of them; while Mr. Swan, as one of the heroes of the day, and with Mrs. Swan leaning on his arm, looked on approvingly, the latter wearing a black silk gown and a shawl covered with fir-cones.