132 TSUGA, OR HEMLOCK SPRUCE FIRS 



Carolina, reads in description very similar to that of 

 the Diversifolia, of which it is the American repre- 

 sentative. Sometimes difficulties of recognition have 

 a way of clearing a way for themselves. A dens ex 

 machina steps in and lends us his aid. In this case 

 its rare presence and so far diminutive size (it was 

 introduced in 1886) seldom give the tree-hunter a 

 chance of any spectacular illumination. Its cones 

 at maturity have a habit of expanding widely, and 

 this is a noticeable peculiarity among its kind. Its 

 leaves, too, if they fulfilled the function attached to 

 them of being only minutely notched or even mu- 

 cronate, ought to be another aid of research in these 

 directions. 



LARCHES 

 (Of the natural order of CONIFERiE, of the 



FAMILY PINACEiE, OF the TRIBE ABIETINE^, 

 OF THE SUB-TRIBE LARICE^) 



Such a green gown God gives the larches, 

 As green as He is good. 



E. Nesbit. 



The Larch as a tree is too serious a subject for the 

 commercial-minded to rhapsodize over in any abstract 

 flights of poetry. It is too much of a business pro- 

 position for those engrossed in occupations of other 

 ultimate aims, to spend time in musing over the 

 fresh green gown that God gave it, or the invigorating 

 freshness of its early spring attire. The primates of 

 song, on the whole, have left it alone as an imaginable 

 noun of composition, and fought shy of it as an 

 expression for their flights in air. Tennyson talks 

 of it as perky, '' There amid perky larches and pine," 

 among which, we read further, stood a new-built 

 mansion of an upstart millionaire, whose walls held 



