THE FORESTS OF ACADIE. 35 



fermented with molasses, the celebrated spruce beer of the 

 American settler, a cask of which every good farmer's wife 

 keeps in the hot, thirsty days of haymaking. To the 

 Indian, the roots of this tree, which shoot out to a great 

 distance immediately under the moss, are his rope, string 

 and thread. With them he ties his bundle, fastens the 

 birch-bark coverings to the poles of his wigwam, or sews 

 the broad sheets of the same material over the ashen ribs 

 of his canoe. 



For ornamental purposes in the open and cultivated 

 glebe the black spruce is very appropriate. The nume- 

 rous and gracefully curved branches, the regular and 

 acute cone shape of the mass, its clear purplish-grey 

 stem, and the beautiful bloom with which its abundant 

 cones are tinged in June, all enhance the picturesqueness 

 of a tree which is long-lived, and, moreover, never out- 

 grows its ornamental appearance, unless confined in 

 dense woodland swamps. 



The bark of the black spruce is scaly, of various shades 

 of purplish-grey, sometimes approaching to a reddish hue, 

 hence, doubtless, suggesting a variety under the name of 

 red spruce, which is in reality a form depending on situa- 

 tion. In the latter, the foliage being frequently of a 

 lighter tinge of green, strengthens the supposition. No 

 specific difierences have, however, been detected between 

 the trees. 



The "White Spruce or Sea Spruce of the Indians (Abies 

 alba, Mich.) is a conifer of an essentially boreal character. 

 Indeed in its extension into our own woodlands it ap- 

 pears to prefer bleak and exposed situations. It thrives 

 on our rugged Atlantic shores, and grows on exposed 

 and brine-washed sands where no other vegetation ap- 



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