CONIFERS. 



SILVA OF NORTE AMERICA. 



131 



The wood of Abies venusta is heavy, not hard, and coarse-grained ; it is light brown tinged with 

 yellow, with paler sapwood, and contains broad conspicuous resinous bands of small summer cells and 

 numerous obscure medullary rays. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.6783, a cubic 

 foot weighing 42.27 pounds. Although it is perhaps occasionally used for fuel, the inaccessibility and 

 steepness of the canons which this tree inhabits and the sparseness of the population of the region have 

 prevented employment of the wood for other purposes. 



Abies venusta was discovered^ by Dr. Thomas Coulter^ in 1831; in 1853 it was introduced by 

 "William Lobb ^ into English gardens. Fortunately this beautiful tree, one of the handsomest and most 

 interesting of its race, has thus found a foothold in the Old World,* for the fires which are frequent 

 and destructive in the forests of the dry coast ranges of southern California seem destined sooner or 

 later to exterminate it from its last retreat in America.^ 



« Along the summit of the central ridges, and about the highest 

 peats, in the most exposed and coldest places imaginable, where no 

 other Pine makes its appearance, it stands the severity of the cli- 

 mate without the slightest perceptible injury, growing in slaty rub- 

 bish which, to all appearance, is incapable of supporting vegetation. 

 In such situations it becomes stunted and bushy, but even then the 

 foliage maintains the same beautiful dark green color, and when 

 seen at a distance it appears more like a handsomely grown Cedar 

 than a Pine." (See Gard. Chron. 1853,435.) Siuce Lobb's time 

 fire has probably destroyed all the trees except those which were 

 protected by the moisture in the bottoms of the deepest canons. 



1 Teste Hooker, Bot Mag. Ixxix. t. 4740. 



2 See iii. 84. " 



8 See X. 60. 



4 In sheltered positions in the milder parts of Great Britain and 



in northern Italy Abies ventisia has grown rapidly and vigorously 



and has produced cones. The tallest specimen in England of which 



I have heard is at Eastnor Castle, in Herefordshire, where there 



is a tree over sixty feet in height (A. H. Kent in lilt.). The largest 



specimen in the park at Tortworth Court, Gloucestershire, which 



was probably planted between 1858 and 1862, in May, 1897, was 

 fifty-two feet in height, with a trunk two feet in diameter at one 

 foot above the ground. (See Gard. Chron. ser. 3, xxi. 305.) Mr. 

 Kent reports several other healthy specimens from forty to fifty 

 feet in height in different parts of England and Scotland. For 

 notes on Abies venusta in Europe, see, also, Fowler, Gard. Chron. 

 1872, 286. — Nicholson, Garden and Forest^ ii. 567. — Masters, 

 Gard. Chron. ser. 3, v. 242. — J. G. Jack, Garden and Forest, iv. 



614. 



In the eastern United States Abies venusta has not proved hardy 

 in any part of the country where it has been tried. 



^ Abies venusta probably always grows slowly, as might be ex- 

 pected from the aridity of the region it inhabits. The log specimen 

 in the Jesup Collection of North American Woods in the American 

 Museum of Natural History, New Xork, cut by T. S. Brandegee 

 in one of the canons of the Santa Lucia Mountains facing the 

 ocean, is twenty-four and three quarters inches in diameter inside 

 the bark and one hundred and twenty-four years old, with an inch 

 of sapwood consisting of forty-one layers of annual growth. 



