y8 ABIES, OR SILVER FIRS 



been more appropriately likened in number to twins 

 than triplets, and whether consensus of opinion will 

 some day reduce them to a dual state, is in anticipa- 

 tion of the results of our remarks on the subject. 

 We will only generally add that if twins are hard to 

 know apart, a fortiori triplets cannot be expected to 

 do anything but treble difficulties. 



The first point that we would impress is that they 

 are trees of uncommon appearance with us. They 

 are not the sort of plants that you are in the least 

 likely to stumble across in an everyday walk, or even 

 after Sabbath-day journeyings, or to alight upon in a 

 full-grown glory of adolescence, or in their fuller 

 maturity of a cone-clad age. But since they are 

 Conifers that grow in England they come into our 

 story, and must not be omitted from the programme 

 of our curriculum. 



A. FiRMA. — The Common Fir of S, Japan was once 

 — notwithstanding the fact that it was a name 

 equally applicable to several others — appositely called 

 A. Bifida, on account of the two very evident little 

 sharp points that surmount the apex of the leaf {vide 

 illustration, Abies Introductor}^, p. 68). It occupies 

 in its own country regions the same sort of position 

 that the A. Pectinata occupies here, and that is, as 

 its English name implies, the Common Silver Fir of 

 the district. 



It is in that guise, and armed with credentials as 

 an endemic or Common Fir of another country, that 

 the A. Firma and all that pertains to it should be 

 enshrined in our memory leady for recall if occasion 

 offers. 



From our Common Fir it can be easily dissociated. 



While the Japanese has these sharp points at apex 

 of leaf — and which we rightly or wrongly are desig- 

 nating bifid, in contradistinction to the more un- 



