10 



THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. 



F. Like nobler creatures, it often 

 survives its beauty. The fir or balsam 

 is the most elegant of the pine family : 

 it usually grows very straight ; the 

 branches project all at the same angle, 

 and grow to a length which diminishes 

 with great regularity as they approach 

 the top ; giving to the tree the form 

 of a slender but very regular cone. 

 The foliage is dense, and of a greener 

 tint than that of the others, which 

 gives it additional beauty, and the 

 bark is very smooth and fair. Its 

 surface is covered with bladders full 

 of a fluid resin, which hardens by long 

 exposure : this is the Canada Balsam 

 of the apothecaries, and gives the spe- 

 cific name. 



C. Does the fir grow to a great 

 height ? 



F. Not perhaps to the gigantic 

 altitude of the hemlock or pine, but it 

 is by no means a dwarf. It is quite 

 a common thing, on looking from an 

 elevation, to see the dark, conical, spear- like tops of the 

 firs rising here and there, above the general mass of foliage. 

 A circumstance recently led me to inquire into this. I had 

 read in a work of scientific authority, that "the Balsam 

 (Abies Ealsamea) rarely grows above the height of forty 

 feet :" this remark struck me at once as incorrect, as I had 

 often seen them much higher. To satisfy myself, I went 

 into the woods, and felled almost the first I saw, one of by 

 no means extraordinary stature, and found the height, by 



BALSAM. 



Pinus Balsamea. 



