78 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



object of beauty, is equalled by very few flowering shrubs, and 

 far surpasses that produced by any other tree. 



In the forest, it rises with a uniform shaft sixty or eighty 

 feet, with its diameter but slightly diminished until near the 

 top, when it tapers very rapidly and forms a head round and 

 full of branches. Below, it is set with stiff, broken, dead limbs, 

 projecting at right angles to the trunk. The rapid tapering of 

 the extremity of the stem, may be noticed at every period of its 

 growth, and forms a striking peculiarity in the appearance of 

 the tree. 



The trunk of the hemlock is covered with a reddish bark, 

 somewhat roughened by long shallow furrows, when it is old, 

 but less so than on many other trees. The branches and 

 small twigs have a smooth, light gray bark. The branchlets 

 are very small, light and slender, and are set irregularly on 

 the horizontal sides of the small branches, forming with them 

 a flat surface. This arrangement renders them singularly 

 well adapted to the making of brooms, a use of the hemlock 

 familiar to housewives in the country towns throughout New 

 England. In the disposition of the limbs, there is no approach 

 to the regular stages of whorls, characteristic of the other pines, 

 but they are scattered without order along the trunk, and being 

 rather small, and horizontal, with an easy sweep upward, ren- 

 der a hemlock of forty or fifty feet, which has stood alone, the 

 most graceful of the evergreens. The leaves are very small 

 and flat, entire or with a few minute teeth towards the end, 

 green above, and shining with rows of silvery dots beneath. 

 They are on very small, thread-like footstalks, arranged in 

 spirals around the branch, but disposing themselves, by the 

 bending of the footstalks, in two rows on the sides. 



The sterile flowers are on small aments at or near the end of 

 the smaller branches. Each ament has at its base a few mem- 

 branaceous brown scales, and, at a little distance above them, 

 an oblong head, one-tenth of an inch long, formed of from ten 

 to twenty heart-shaped, hollow scales, beneath each of which 

 are two cells full of the fertilizing dust. 



The fertile aments are on the ends of the outer branchlets. 

 They are egg-shaped, one-fourth of an inch long, and imbri- 



