1866.] BRUNET — ON THE GENUS PICEA. 107 



northward. In the vicinity of Quebec its height is not above 

 seventy feet, and in the valley of the Saguenay, it does not exceed 

 forty or fifty feet, with a diameter of eight or ten inches. It 

 prefers a deep, black, and moist soil, thickly covered with moss, 

 but in places which are constantly wet or covered with water, as 

 in peat bogs, it grows but indifferently, and rises to no great 

 height. 



The bark of the P. nigra is yellowish on the young branches ; 

 the older trunks are covered with a reddish corky rhytidoma, the 

 cracks in which are chiefly vertical, and which exfoliates at last in 

 little plates, more or less rectangular in shape. 



The leaves are from five to seven lines in length, and about 

 three fourths of a line in breadth, flattened, and with the apex 

 obtuse. They are of a sombre green color, and are supported 

 on sterigmata twice as prominent as those of the preceding species. 

 The leaves of the P. nigra are shorter, more closely appressed 

 to the branches, and more flattened than those of the P. alba. 

 They also present more numerous rows of stomata, amounting 

 sometimes to not less than five or six rows on each side of the 

 median vein, and the diameter of their resiniferous ducts is 

 smaller. 



The male catkins are ovoid, slightly pedunculate, and three or 

 four lines in length. The female flowers are also in ovoid catkins, 

 violet-red in color, six or eight lines in length, which are at first 

 upright, but after impregnation are bent sharply downwards. The 

 cones are ovoid, reddish-brown, from one inch to one and a half 

 inches in length, slightly pedunculate ; scales thin, about six lines 

 in length, with undulated and denticulated edges. The seeds are 

 black, with an oval wing, smaller than that of P. alba. The em- 

 bryo has ordinarily four cotyledons, rarely more. This tree 

 flowers in the month of June, about a week later than the pre- 

 ceding species, and ripens its seeds the same year. The seeds 

 germinate in three or four weeks, and demand a great deal of 

 moisture. After the fall of the perisperm, the young plant gener- 

 ally presents four seed-leaves, which have the form of the 

 ordinary leaves, and already present the sombre green color which 

 characterizes the foliage of the P. nigra. 



In the localities most favourable to the development of this 

 species, and in places where the white pine has become rare, 

 the black spruce is cut by the lumberers. It is manufactured 

 into planks and boards, and the wood is employed for the same 



