394 THE SPRUCE FIR, 



Spruce Fir can be appreciated : and it is not altogether 

 just of the author just quoted to measure the excellences of 

 a tree essentially mountainous by the same rules which he 

 applies to the humbler inhabitants of the lowlands. " It 

 is," says Sir T. D. Lauder, " the great tree of the Alps, 

 and is so mentally associated with the grandeur of Swiss 

 scenery that the sight of it never fails to touch chords in 

 our bosom which awaken the most pleasing recollections. 

 What can be more truly sublime than to behold, opposed 

 to the intensely blue ether, the glazed white summits of 

 Mont Blanc, or the Jungfrau, rising over the interminable 

 forests of Spruce Firs which clothe the bases of the 

 mountains, whilst some such gigantic specimens as those 

 we have been noticing rise in groups among the rocks 

 before us, many of them shivered, broken, and maimed by 

 tempests, their dark forms opposed to all the prismatic 

 hues of some immense gorgeous glacier, which nourishes 

 in its immense bosom a mighty river that is doomed to 

 fertilize and enrich whole kingdoms ? " It here attains a 

 height of a hundred and fifty, or even a hundred and 

 eighty feet, diminishing regularly in size till it approaches 

 the boundary of perpetual frost. The whole of the Hartz 

 Mountains are covered with it, and it affords both fuel 

 and timber for the mines and furnaces of that district. 

 It is planted or sown, and cut down in masses, like our 

 coppice woods ; and self-sown seedlings supply the va- 

 cancies created by every cutting. In France and Germany 

 hedges, or rather lines, of trees, serving as boundary fences 

 and at the same time as sources of shelter and shade, are 

 used in the same way as thorn-hedges are in England. 

 They produce an enormous quantity of timber for fencing 

 and fuel every twenty or thirty years ; and every year the 

 fall of their leaves supplies manure. With us, however, 

 the Spruce Fir, unless planted in peculiar situations, both 

 with regard to soil and aspect, does not thrive. It pro- 

 duces abundance of cones at an early age, but soon dwindles 

 away and dies. 



