The Days of a Man 



1892 



How to 



tell fir 



from 



spruct 



that time, however, Douglas had certainly not seen 

 the Sequoia, nor of course the Giant Eucalyptus of 

 the Blacks' Spur in the Break o' Day Range in 

 southeastern Australia. 



Far more abundant and scarcely less noble is the 

 Yellow Pine Pinus ponderosa. This lacks the 

 stately symmetry of its neighbor, but its opulent 

 spread, very long needles, and rosy-tinted, yellowish- 

 brown bark bring it into easy rivalry. 



Scattered through the forests occur other great 

 trees, in particular the Incense Cedar Libocedrus 

 decurrens and two or three species each of fir 

 Abies and of spruce Pseudotsuga. Northward 

 the Douglas Spruce, the most abundant of these, 

 gradually replaces pine and is the chief constituent 

 of the great woods of Oregon and Washington. 



Spruce and fir look about alike to the uninitiated; 

 long ago, therefore, I framed a discriminating bit of 

 verse : 



F is for fir, 



It looks toward the firmament 



which, being interpreted, means that in all species 

 of fir the cones point up, while in the spruces they 

 all droop. Furthermore, on each spray of fir the 

 leaf tips curve upward, so that looking down from 

 above every leaf can be seen. Spruce leaves, on the 

 contrary, surround the small branches, and the 

 upper ones hide the lower. 



Strolling out after dinner at Wawona, 1 encoun- 

 tered a typical mountain prevaricator who related 

 how once when a Sequoia crashed to the ground, "the 

 echoes were heard in the mountains for six weeks"; 



C 430 D 



