THE FORESTS 209 



they spread their shell-like scales and allow the 

 brown-winged seeds to fly in the mellow air, while 

 the empty cones remain to beautify the tree until 

 the coming of a fresh crop. 



The staminate cones of all the conif era3 are beauti 

 ful, growing in bright clusters, yellow, and rose, and 

 crimson. Those of the Hemlock Spruce are the 

 most beautiful of all, forming little conelets of blue 

 flowers, each on a slender stem. 



Under all conditions, sheltered or stormbeaten, 

 well-fed or ill-fed, this tree is singularly graceful in 

 habit. Even at its highest limit upon exposed ridge- 

 tops, though compelled to crouch in dense thickets, 

 huddled close together, as if for mutual protection, 

 it still manages to throw out its sprays in irre 

 pressible loveliness ; while on well-ground moraine 

 soil it develops a perfectly tropical luxuriance of 

 foliage and fruit, and is the very loveliest tree in 

 the forest ; poised in thin white sunshine, clad with 

 branches from head to foot, yet not in the faintest 

 degree heavy or bunchy, it towers in unassuming 

 majesty, drooping as if unaffected with the aspir 

 ing tendencies of its race, loving the ground while 

 transparently conscious of heaven and joyously re 

 ceptive of its blessings, reaching out its branches like 

 sensitive tentacles, feeling the light and reveling in 

 it. No other of our alpine conifers so finely veils its 

 strength. Its delicate branches yield to the moun 

 tains' gentlest breath ; yet is it strong to meet the 

 wildest onsets of the gale, strong not in resistance, 

 but compliance, bowing, snow-laden, to the ground, 

 gracefully accepting burial month after month in 

 the darkness beneath the heavy mantle of winter. 



