120 PICE^, OR SPRUCE TREES 



are mounted on those little woody excrescences 

 which professors call pulvini (or projections). Then, 

 again, their leaves are spiny and pointed. This is 

 all in accordance with the habits of Piceae and not 

 in accordance with the practice of the leaves of the 

 Abies, which are dented at the apex as a rule. 



They are also credited with only showing white 

 stomata bands on the under-surface of the leaf. To 

 this statement, which most authorities have endorsed, 

 we make differential and deferential demur, since 

 on the higher branches of a Sitka Spruce here, over 

 126 ft. high, we have found leaves with visible in- 

 dications of stomata also on the upper-side. Indeed, 

 the very leaves from the upper regions of this tree 

 seem almost to belong to another specimen of the 

 arboricultural race altogether. Although they have 

 the same botanical characteristics, with this ex- 

 ception of stomata, an exception that does not 

 descend to the leaves on the lower part of the same 

 tree, they are thicker in shape, and more densely 

 crowded in habit. The leaves in question were sent 

 to the authorities at Kew, and opinion arrived at 

 endorsed. They were commented upon in the Ar- 

 boricultural Journal, 191 5-16 vols., by Bean and 

 others. 



This little disturbance of the accepted theory that 

 no flat-leaved Spruces exhibited stomata on both 

 sides of the leaf, we should like to add, ought in more 

 justice to be attributed to the officious action of a 

 tree squirrel who had bitten off some top twigs of a 

 high tree, rather than to any commonplace ob- 

 servational tendencies on the part of the owner and 

 writer. Palniam qui meruit ferat (Let him who has 

 deserved the palm, bear it). 



To differentiate at sight between the Sitka and the 

 Omorica would be no easy task for the amateur, had 

 it not been for the fact that the Omorica is obligingly 



