50 ERYTHEA. 
pact genus Abies, and Spruce in a like general way to trees 
of the widely different genus Picea and the closely allied 
genera but recently separated from it—Hesperopeuce, Tsuga 
and Pseudotsuga. In late articles I have designated the 
kinds of Spruce in the vernacular as True Spruce, Western 
Spruce, Hemlock Spruce and False Spruce, respectively. 
The genus Pseudotsuga (False Spruce), comprises two 
distinct species, the well-known original P. taxifola, properly 
called Douglas Spruce, and the other the lately separated 
P. macrocarpa, the Big-coned Spruce. The general accep- 
tance of distinguishing names would avoid ambiguity and 
lead to unmistakable references, a desirable consummation in 
garden botany, one which the genius of the age demands and 
which could be brought about in a few years if the describers 
and admirers of plants would agree upon fitness, precision 
and uniformity in the use of vernacular names. 
In a lately published “List of Conifers and Taxads in 
cultivation in the open air of Great Britain and Ireland” by 
Dr. Maxwell T. Masters, occurs the following paragraph 
under Psruporsuea, Carriere. 
“A genus constructed for the reception of the Douglas 
Fir. The habit and foliage are those of the Silver Firs, the 
male flowers like those of Picea; cones pendent, ripening in 
the first year; scales persistent; bracts markedly three-lobed; 
wing of the seed narrow, pointed; cotyledons 5 to7, three-sided, 
entire as are the primary leaves. It differs from Spruce in 
foliage. The structure of the wood is quite distinct.” 
Concerning this elaborate statement of the reasons why 
Dr. Masters regards our western tree as belonging to the firs 
rather than to the spruces as generally arranged, I have this 
to say in analyzing his argumentative description. 
(1) The habit of the Douglas Spruce in youth is much 
unlike any fir, and in age it somewhat resembles only one 
species of Fir—Abies grandis—with which it is associated 
in the forests of the north-west, but the trees are quite unlike 
fr trees with which they are elsewhere associated, (2) the 
foliage in color resembles a few of the species of Fir,—those 
