32 FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



entirely superseding that of the oak. Its surface is very 

 rough with deep grooves between the scales. Of a light 

 pearly gray outside, it shows a madder brown tint when 

 chipped. The sojourner in the woods seeks the dry and 

 easily detached bark which clings to an old dead hem- 

 lock as a great auxiliary to his stock of fuel for the camp 

 fire ; it burns readily and long, emitting an intense heat, 

 and so fond are the old Indians of sitting round a small 

 conical pile of the ignited bark in their wigwams, that 

 it bears in their language the sobriquet of " the old 

 Grannie." 



The hemlock, as a shrub, is perhaps the most orna- 

 mental of all the North American evergreens. It has 

 none of that tight, stiff, old-fashioned appearance so gene- 

 rally seen in other spruces : the graceful foliage droops 

 loosely and irregularly, hiding the stem, and, when each 

 spray is tipped with the new season's shoot of the 

 brightest sea-green imaginable, the appearance is very 

 beautiful. The young cones are likewise of a delicate 

 green. 



This tree has a wide range in the coniferous wood- 

 lands of North America, extending from the Hudson's 

 Bay territory to the mountains of Georgia. The great 

 southerly extension of the northern forms of trees on the 

 south-east coast, is due to the direction of the Allegha- 

 nian range, which, commencing in our own province of 

 vegetation, carries its flora as far south as 35 degrees 

 north latitude, elevation affording the same conditions of 

 growth as distance from the equator. 



It would appear that this giant spruce has no analo- 

 gous form in the Old World as have others of the genus 

 Abies found in the New. All the genera of conifers, 



