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trees, and on cone-bearing branches.

The leaves

are shorter and broader, and are set much thicker on the spray, than those of other firs and pines. The upper surface of the leaves is also of a darker and brighter green, while underneath they have

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two white silvery lines running lengthwise on each side of the midrib, which make a conspicuous appearance on the partially turned up leaves; whence its name. The cones of the Silver Fir are large and cylindrical, being from six to eight inches long, erect, and bluntly pointed at both ends. When young they are green, but, as they advance to maturity, the scales acquire a rich purplish colour, and when quite ripe are deep brown; they remain upwards of a year upon the tree, as they first appear in May, when they blossom, and do not ripen the seed till October of the following year. The scales are large, with a long dorsal bract, and fall from the axillar spindle of the cone in the spring of the second year. The seeds are irregular and angular, with a large membranaceous wing. Cones with fertile seeds are seldom produced before the tree has attained its fortieth year; though without, seeds often appear before half that period has elapsed.

Gilpin remarks that "the Silver Fir has very little to boast in point of picturesque beauty. It has all the regularity of the spruce, but without its floating foliage. There is a sort of harsh, stiff, unbending formality in the stem, the branches, and the whole economy of the tree, which makes it disagreeable. We rarely see it, even in its happiest state, assume a picturesque shape." In this opinion Sir T. D. Lauder does not entirely coincide, for, in his remarks upon Gilpin's text, he says, "As to the picturesque effect of this tree, we have seen many of them throw out branches from

near the very root, that twined and swept away from them in so bold a manner, as to give them, in a very great degree, that character which is most capable of engaging the interest of the artist."

The rate of growth of the Silver Fir is slow when young, but rapid after it has attained the age of ten or twelve years. In England, under advantageous circumstances, it attains a magnificent size, some recorded trees being from 100 to 130 feet in height, with trunks varying in diameter from three to six feet, and containing from two hundred to upwards of three hundred feet of timber. In Scotland, also, it has reached dimensions equally great. At Roseneath Castle, Argyleshire, there are two Silver Firs which Sir T. D. Lauder considered the finest specimens he had ever seen. When measured in 1817, he says, "the circumference of one of them, at five feet from the ground, was fifteen feet nine inches; at three feet from the ground, it was seventeen feet six inches; and just above the roots, it was nineteen feet eight inches. The second tree was sixteen feet two inches in girth at five feet from the ground; seventeen feet eleven inches at three feet from the ground; and nineteen feet ten inches when measured immediately above the roots." The Silver Fir likewise grows to a large size in Ireland, much more rapidly than any other tree. Some planted in a wet clay, on a rock, have measured twelve feet in girth at the base, and seven feet six inches at five feet high, after a growth of forty years.

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THE NORWAY SPRUCE FIR.

[Abies excelsa. Nat. Ord.-Conifera; Linn.- Monac. Mon.] THOUGH a native of the mountains of Europe and Asia in similar parallels of latitude, the Spruce Fir is not considered indigenous to Britain. It must, however, have been introduced at an early period, as it is mentioned by our oldest writers on arboriculture. It is most common in Lapland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and throughout the

*Generic characters. Flowers monoecious. Barren catkins crowded, racemose. Scales of the cone thinned away to the edge, and usually membranous or coriaceous. Leaves never fascicled.

north of Germany. It grows in the south of Norway at an elevation of 3000 feet above the level of the sea, and in the north on mountains in 70° N. lat. at 750 feet. In the valleys of the Swiss Alps, the Spruce is frequently found above one hundred and fifty feet in height, with trunks from four to five feet in diameter. This tree requires a soft moist soil. Among dry rocks and stones, where the Scotch fir would flourish, the Spruce Fir will scarcely grow.

The Norway Spruce Fir is the loftiest of European trees, attaining, in favourable situations, the enormous height of one hundred and eighty feet; with a very straight upright trunk, from two to six feet in diameter, and widely extending branches, which spread out regularly on every side, so as to form a cone-like or pyramidal shape, terminating in a straight arrow-like leading shoot. In young trees, the branches are disposed in regular whorls from the base to the summit; but in old trees the lower branches drop off. The trunk is covered with a thin bark, of a reddish colour and scaly surface, with occasional warts or small excrescences distributed over its surface. The leaves are solitary, of a dark grassy green, generally under one inch in length, straight, stiff, and sharp-pointed, disposed around the shoots, and more crowded together laterally than on the upper and under sides of the branchlets. The barren flowers, about one inch long, are cylindrical, on long catkins, curved, of a yellowish colour, with red tips, and discharging, when expanded, a profusion of

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