28 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [15:1— Jan., 1919 



one takes the trouble to compare the branches, with the spruce, 

 they will see that they are flat and the needles do not project from 

 them in all directions as they do on the spruce, but are conven- 

 tionally arranged at an angle of 45° with the larger ones. The 

 bark, too is quite different, being smooth, thin and marked by 

 swollen blisters until quite old; in older trees it becomes a reddish 

 brown, broken into small, irregular scaly plates. The young 

 branchlets are pale yellow, green and pubescent or hairy. ' One 

 could surely have no better distinguishing features. 



Let us examine some branches closely ; we find the leaves rather 

 flat and bluntly pointed. A beautiful dark green shining color 

 above with a pale silver below. Fir leaves are also stemless while 

 hemlock leaves have minute petioles. They are persistent eight to 

 ten years. The pointed buds are a rich reddish brown color, with 

 scales covered by a transparent, shining varnish to protect from 

 winter's ice and snow. 



The fir doesn't sleep all the year under its coating of snow and 

 ice, but when the sun's warm rays have penetrated the cold, the 

 little buds begin their work in May and June. The pistillate 

 flowers are borne in axillary, scaly cones on the upper branches and 

 are a rich purple color; the staminate flowers are borne on the 

 under side of the branches, lower down on the tree. The anthers 

 are yellow, tinged with purple. 



The fruit of the fir is in the form of a cone about four inches long. 

 The most noticeable thing about them is that they stand erect on 

 the tree. Each scale of the cone is broad and rounded and falls off 

 at maturity, shedding seeds at same time; this leaves the central 

 axis standing. The cones are often so numerous that they give a 

 purple hue to the top of the tree. 



How does a tree living in situations where there is warm weather 

 for such a short time maintain itself? It seems as if the seeds 

 would just get started to germinate when they would freeze. 

 Dame Nature provides for this lack and protects her young seed- 

 lings by a thick mass of snow. Yes, snow is warm; if you don't 

 believe it, cover yourself all up in it sometime. Snow in the 

 Adirondacks often falls so early in the year that the soil never 

 freezes throughout the winter. The more adverse the conditions 

 up to a certain limit, of course the stronger the effort on the part 

 of the tree to reproduce its kind. On high mountains where the 

 season is so short that there is insufficient warmth for seed produc- 



