TREES IN NATURE 109 



this country is legion, and they are conspicuous 

 features in many a landscape. It is beyond 

 our scope even merely to mention any con- 

 siderable number of them. For the most part 

 they resemble the Scots pine and the yew in 

 affording a contrast to the main body of our 

 indigenous trees. Most of them send up a 

 single, lofty stem, from which the branches, 

 approaching a horizontal direction, especially 

 in the lower part of the tree, and diminishing 

 in length according to their height, give to the 

 whole structure an acutely pyramidal form. 

 Such are the spruce fir, the silver fir, and the 

 Douglas fir. The spruce fir, when quite young, 

 is familiar to us as the Christmas tree — itself a 

 recent importation from Germany. All these 

 trees, and all the other conifers with one ex- 

 ception, to be named immediately, are ever- 

 green ; and aid to mitigate the bareness — not 

 without its own peculiar beauty — of our winter 

 landscape. 



The larch should perhaps be singled out for 

 more particular mention. It is the one conifer 

 that loses its leaves in winter, and it is then the 

 barest-looking of all our trees. It had not 

 been long enough in England in Evelyn's day 



