CHARACTERISTICS OF SPRUCE TREES 103 



or whorls. Their leaves are spirally or radially 

 arranged — that is to say, they cover the stem and 

 lateral branchlets on all sides, and do not leave bare 

 spaces upon the latter in lines like the V-shaped, or 

 pectinate arrangement, of the Silver Fir. 



Needle-like in shape their leaves arise singly from 

 the stems and branchlets. On examination it will 

 be found that they are placed upon little raised 

 woody excrescences of the stem. These are variously 

 called pulvini, or cushions, peg-like projections, or 

 stumps. In golf phraseology they would be called 

 *' tees," and not inaptly, since a tee is a base which 

 intervenes between the ground and the ball placed 

 upon it, and so in like manner is this projection, 

 nothing more or less than a base that intervenes 

 between the leaf and the stem. 



Pulvinus is the Latin for a cushion, and a cushion 

 is a commodity commonly considered in the Western 

 grades of refined civilization to imply something 

 that is soft and yielding, and this impression it 

 conveys to nearly all except perhaps to a Japanese, 

 who, in spite of all these opportunities of mollifying 

 influences that civilization has flung in his face, still 

 prefers to lay his Spartan head on a wooden rest. 

 The object of our description is, however, anything 

 but soft and yielding ; on the contrary, it is hard 

 and wooden as the Japanese head-rest. The simile 

 does not seem a very happy effort upon the part of 

 the author of it. Anything more anti-pulvinate, in 

 the European acceptance of the term, could not be 

 conceived by any one who seeks enlightenment from 

 the meaning of language. 



However you like to think of it, whatever you care 

 to call it, this fact is assured, that leaf and pulvinus 

 are in relation of clinging affinity, and you cannot 

 pull the one off without tearing away the other. 

 Prince Houssain, of Arabian Nights fame, stuck no 



