2304- ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 



Properties and Uses. The wood of the spruce fir is light, elastic, and vary- 

 ing in durability according to the soil on which it has grown. Its colour is 

 either a reddish or a yellowish white, and it is much less resinous than the 

 wood of P. sylvestris. According to Hartig, it weighs 64 Ib. 1 1 oz. per cubic 

 foot when green, 4-9 Ib. 5 oz. when half-dry, and 35 Ib. 2 oz. when quite dry ; 

 and it shrinks in bulk one seventieth part in drying. The value of the wood 

 for fuel is to that of the beech as 1079 is to 1540 ; and its charcoal is to that 

 of the beech as 1 176 is to 1500. Both as fuel and charcoal, the spruce fir is 

 superior to the silver fir. As fuel, it is to the silver fir as 1211 to 1079; 

 and as charcoal, as 1176 to 1127. The ashes furnish potash ; and the trunk 

 produces an immense quantity of resin, from which Burgundy pitch is made. 

 The resin is obtained by incisions made in the bark, when it oozes out between 

 that and the soft wood ; and the mode of procuring and manufacturing it will 

 be detailed hereafter. The bark may be used for tanning; and the buds and 

 young shoots for making spruce beer, the details respecting which will be given 

 under the head of Anigra. The cones, boiled in whey, are considered good in 

 cases of scurvy. The principal use to which the wood is applied is, for scaffold- 

 ing-poles, ladders, spars, oars, and masts to small vessels ; for which purposes, 

 the greater proportion of the importations of spruce fir timber from Norway 

 are in the form of entire trunks, often with the bark on, from 30ft. to 60 ft. in 

 length, and not more than 6 in. or 8 in. in diameter at the thickest end. The 

 planks and deals are used for flooring rooms, and by musical instrument makers 

 and carvers; they are also used by cabinet-makers for lining furniture, and for 

 packing-boxes, and many similar purposes. The wood, being fine-grained, takes 

 a high polish, and does well for gilding on ; and it will take a black stain as well 

 as the wood of the pear tree. In carving, the grain is remarkably easy to 

 work, taking the tool every way. No wood glues better ; and hence its great use 

 for lining furniture, and making musical instruments. The young trees, espe- 

 cially when the bark is kept on, are found to be more durable than young trees 

 of any other species of pine or fir, with the single exception of the larch ; and 

 for this reason they are admirably adapted for fencing, for forming roofs to 

 agricultural buildings, and for a variety of country purposes. The durability 

 of young trees of the spruce fir was first pointed out by Pontey in his 

 Profitable Planter ; and the circumstance which led him to discover it was, 

 the sound state in which he found the dead branches in spruce fir plantations, 

 which, though probably some of them had been dead more than twenty years, 

 he uniformly found not only undecayed, but tough. This agrees with an ob- 

 servation of Mitchell, that the lateral branches of both the silver fir and the 

 spruce fir are so full of turpentine, as to be as red as brick, and 4 Ib. per 

 foot heavier than oak. On further examination, Pontey discovered that young 

 trees, which had been employed as beams in buildings, were perfectly sound at 

 the end of 24 years ; the bark, which had been left on, being also perfectly 

 sound. There are but few spruce fir trees in Britain old enough to produce 

 timber of large dimensions ; but some of the older trees cut down at Blair, on 

 the estate of the Duke of Athol, have been used as spars and topmasts, and 

 found equal in quality to those imported from Norway. The value of the 

 bark for tanning is nearly equal to that of the birch and the larch, quite equal 

 to that of the silver fir; and much stronger than that of the Scotch pine. In 

 Sweden, and also (according to Kasthofer) in Switzerland, the young shoots 

 form a winter food for cattle and sheep. The inhabitants of Finmark mix the 

 points of the shoots with the oats given to their horses ; and the Laplanders 

 eat an excrescence about the size of a strawberry, which they collect from the 

 extremity of the branches, where it is produced by the puncture of insects. 

 The floors of rooms in Norway and Sweden, we are informed by Mary Wol- 

 stonecroft, and also by Samuel Laing, Esq., (the author of Journal of a Re- 

 sidence in Norway during the Years 1834-35-36,) are, at least once a week, 

 strewed over with the green tops of the fir er juniper; which, on a white 

 well-scoured deal floor, have a lively and pretty effect, and prevent the mud on 

 the shoes from adhering to and soiling the wood, giving out at the same time, 



