32 FOREST LIFE AND 



THE SPRUCE-TREE. 



This tree presents a tapering trunk, with a top of mathemat- 

 ical exactness, a regular cone. They attain to the height of sev- 

 enty or one hundred feet, measuring at the base — the largest I 

 have ever seen — about eight feet in circumference. Lightness, 

 strength, and elasticity are the distinguishing qualities of this 

 wood, and, owing to this, it is extensively used in ship-building, 

 and the frame- work of houses. 



The Hemlock is a large tree, often measuring fifteen feet in 

 circumference at the base ; the column rises to an elevation of 

 from seventy to one hundred feet ; it holds its size remarkably 

 until it reaches the principal limbs, two thirds its height, when it 

 tapers rapidly to the extremity. Its foliage is beautiful for its 

 softness, and forms the principal ingredient in the bed of lumber- 

 men. The use of the boughs for brooms is known to the good 

 country people throughout New England. By persons of classic- 

 al taste, it is considered the most beautiful of the evergreens. 



The author of Massachusetts Reports on Trees, &c, to whom 

 I am much indebted for many of the preceding observations, re- 

 marks of the young Hemlock, "that in the beginning of summer 

 each twig is terminated with a tuft of yellowish-green, recent 

 leaves, surmounting the darker green of the former year ; the ef- 

 fect, as an object of beauty, is equaled by very few flowering 

 shrubs, and far surpasses that produced by any other tree." The 

 bark is valuable in tanning leather, and makes excellent fuel. 

 This tree grows in immense quantities in the northeast part of 

 Maine, often occupying acres of ground, to the exclusion of nearly 

 all other trees. Its wood is more valued for boards than former- 

 ly ; its close grain and hardness fit it peculiarly for flooring. " It 

 is much used in the large Atlantic cities as a substitute for stone 

 in the pavement of streets, for which purpose it is sawn into hex- 

 agonal (six-sided) blocks of eight inches in thickness, and eight, 

 ten, or eighteen inches in breadth." 



