64 



SILVA OF NOETE AMERICA, 



CONIFER-S. 



branches. The bark of the trunt, Tphieh varies in color from cinnamon-red to gray more or less 

 tinged with purple, is from one half to three quarters of an inch in thickness, and deeply divided into 

 narrow rounded ridges covered with thick closely appressed scales. The branehlets, which are very 

 slender, when they first appear are light yellow-brown and coated with pale pubescence; during their 

 first winter they are rather darker, and in their third season become glabrous and dark gray-brown 

 tino-ed with purple. The winter-buds are broadest at the middle, rather obtuse, light chestnut-brown, 

 slightly puberulous, and about one sixteenth of an inch in length. The leaves, which are light 

 yellow-green when they first emerge from the bud, are oblong, rounded and rarely emarginate at the 

 apex, entire or often obscurely denticulate above the middle, dark yellow-green and lustrous on the 

 upper surface, which is obscurely grooved, especially toward the base, marked on the lower surface with 

 five or six rows of stomata on each side of the low broad midrib, from one third to two thirds of an 

 inch long and about one sixteenth of an inch wide, and fall during their third season from the 

 persistent bases which at first are dark orange-color, and, gradually growing darker, continue to 

 roughen the branches slightly for three or four years longer. The staminate flowers, which with 

 their stalks are about three eighths of an inch long and have light yellow anthers, appear in May a 

 little earlier than the pistillate flowers, which are an eighth of an inch in length, and pale green, with 

 broad bracts coarsely laciniate on the margins and longer than their scales. The cones are suspended 

 on slender puberulous peduncles often a quarter of an inch long, and are ovate-oblong, acute, from 

 one half to three quarters of an inch in length, pale green, with orbicular-oblong scales almost as wide 

 as they are long, and broad truncate bracts shghtly laciniate on the margins ; late in the autumn 

 those portions of the scales which have been exposed to the fight become dull gray-brown, while the 

 remainder are bright red-brown ; opening and gradually losing their seeds during the winter, they 

 mostly remain on the branches until the following spring. The seeds are one sixteenth of an inch 

 in length and usually marked with two or three large oil vesicles, and are nearly half as long as their 

 wings, which are broad at the base and gradually taper to the rounded apex. 



Tsuga Canadensis is distributed from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to the northern end of 

 Lake Temiscamang on the Ottawa Rlver,^ and westward through Ontario ^ to eastern Minnesota ; ^ south- 

 ward It ranges through the northern states to Newcastle County In Delaware, southern Michigan and 

 central Wisconsin, and along the Appalachian Mountains to northwestern Alabama.* Common in the 

 maritime provinces of Canada, and most abundant in New England, northern New York, and western 

 Pennsylvania, where it is frequently an important element of the forest, the Hemlock of northeastern 

 America attains its largest size near streams on the slopes of the high mountains of North CaroHna 

 and Tennessee. Often an inhabitant of rocky ridges, which it sometimes covers when they face the 

 north with dark dense groves where other trees are rarely found, it loves also the steep rocky banks 

 of narrow river gorges, and is scattered through upland forests of White Pine and deciduous-leaved 

 trees and less commonly on the borders of swamps In deep imperfectly drained soil. 



The wood of Tsuga Canadensis is fight, soft, not strong, brittle, coarse, crooked-grained, difficult 



1 Provaneher, Fl. Canadiennet ii. 556. — Brunet, CaU Veg. Lig. 

 Can. 58. — Macoun, Cat. Can. PL 471. 



^ Agassiz, Lake Superior, its Physical Character, Vegetation, and 

 Animals, 165. 



^ Tsuga Canadensis was found in April, 1890, by Mr. H. B. 



r 



Ayres, to the westward of Lake Superior, in Carlton County, Min- 

 nesota. (See Garden and Forest, iii. 496, 544.) 



In tlie journal of the expedition under General Lewis Cass, 

 which traversed what is now Carlton County in 1820, the Hemlock 

 is spoken of as being abundant in this part of Minnesota, from 

 which it now appears to have almost completely disappeared. (See 

 Schoolcraft, Narrative Journal of Travels from Detroit Northwest 

 through the Great Chain of American Lakes, 206,207, 210. See, 



also, E. G. Hill, Garden and Forest, iii. 553. — Ayres, Garden and 

 Forest, vi. 418.) Kicollet, in 1841, speaks of the occasional occur- 

 rence of the Hemlock on the Mississippi River, above the Crow 

 Wing, which is much farther west than it is now known (Rep. 

 Hydrographic Basin Upper Mississippi River, 64 [Senate Doc. 

 1843]) ; and Upham refers doubtfully to the existence of the Hem- 

 lock at several places in eastern Minnesota {Rep. Geolog. and Nat. 

 Hist. Surv. Minn. 1883, pt. vi. 132 [Cat. FL Minn.]), 



* In July, 1880, Tsuga Canadensis was found by Dr. Charles 

 Mohr growing in deep rocky valleys and gorges at the head-waters 

 of the western fork of the Sipsey Kiver in the northern part of 

 Winston County, Alabama. 



