SILVER FIRS. 215 



more or less horizontally placed along the branchlets, but some- 

 what scattered all round the leading shoots ; and from one to 

 one inch and three quarters long, and rather more than one line 

 broad, quite straight, linear, flat, long, and narrow, with the 

 ends bidented, and the base twisted ; of a dark shining green 

 on the upper side, and quite glaucous below, except on the 

 mid-rib and margins, which are of a deep green colour. 

 Branches mostly in whorls, thickly set on the stem, from the 

 base upwards, the lower ones being horizontal, but as they 

 ascend the stem, they get gradually shorter and more elevated 

 at their points ; branchlets and smaller spray, slender, rather 

 short, flat, much divided, spreading, and thickly set in two 

 horizontal rows along the branches. Male catkins on footstalks, 

 cylindrical, and rounded at the ends. Cones erect, from seven 

 to eight inches long, and nearly two inches in diameter, of a 

 cylindrical shape, rounded at the base, and obtuse at the apex, 

 with a concave depression in the centre, and so numerous on 

 the upper side of the top branches, as to give that part of the 

 tree quite the appearance of a large candelabrum full of wax 

 lights. Scales concave, closely imbricated, and of a leathery 

 texture, from three quarters to an inch broad, and one inch 

 deep on the exposed part, with the upper margin transversely 

 elliptic, quite entire on the edges, and very thin. Bracteas 

 small, strap-shaped, a little contracted at the top, crenated 

 along the edges, and furnished with a central point, and en- 

 tirely hidden by the scales. Seeds soft, full of turpentine, 

 somewhat three-cornered, and furnished with oblique wedge- 

 shaped wings. 



A handsome tree, of a pyramidal shape, thickly furnished 

 with vertical branches to the ground, and growing fifty feet 

 high, and three feet in diameter, with the stem covered with a 

 .thick ashy-gray coloured bark, full of deep fissures when old. 



It is found on the Taurian and Caramanian mountains in 

 Asia Minor ; M. Kotschy discovered it in one of the valleys of 

 the Taurus, to the north-west of the great Cilician defile, called 

 Gullah Boghos, and on the southern slope of the great moun- 



