CANADIAX SPRUCES. 179 



under open air exposure, as we know from experience ; every 

 season the red spruce poles have to be replaced more frequently than 

 the black in fences. 



The best general description that has hitherto been published of 

 P. rubra is that of my late friend William Gorrie, in the Transac- 

 tions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, Vol. x, p. 353. Mr. 

 Gorrie's description was taken from the tree as observed by him in 

 the plantations and pleasure grounds in Britain, but, so far as it goes, 

 it corresponds entirely with the tree as seen in the Nova Scotian 

 woods : — '' The red spruce fir, or Newfoundland red pine, is found in 

 Nova Scotia, some parts of Lower Canada, and northward to Hudson 

 Bay, but is not included in Dr. Asa Gray's Flora of the Northern 

 United States. It is said to be a better and finer tree than either of 

 its allies — the black and white spruces — from which it further differs in 

 being entirely devoid of that glaucous green by which the leaves of 

 these two are distinguished. It is in fact exactly like the common 

 Norway spruce in the color both of its foliage and young branches 

 but differs from it in its thinner and more slender growth, shorter 

 leaves, and much smaller cones. From this close resemblance in 

 color of rubra and excelsa, Americans call the latter the red spruce 

 of Europe. Like the alba, the rubra drops its cones in the course of 

 the first winter and succeeding spring, while those of nigra are 

 retained on the tree for two or more years. Like its two American 

 associates, alba and nigra, rubra seems to delight in moist soils con- 

 taining a proportion of peat, and moist upland climates. Those now 

 growing at Tynehead were reared from seeds gathered in Newfound- 

 land, and a portion of the plants which were planted on good, dry, 

 heavy soil, within from two to three miles, and at half the altitude, 

 dwindled away after the first few years, till they entirely perished. 

 The trees at Dunmore are no doubt growing at a low altitude, but 

 they are sheltered by a high wooded bank on the south, and are on a 

 damp bottom. Mr. Andrew Murray, a distinguished member of the 

 Botanical Society, and recognized authority on Coniferas, has ignored 

 the existence of rubra, but he has jji'obably never seen it growing, 

 as, although long introduced, it is still scarce in Britain." In illus- 

 tration of these remarks Mr. Gorrie exhibited and presented to the 



