PICEA, OR THE SILVER FIRS. 51 



shape, rounded at the base, and obtuse at the apex, with a 

 concave depression in the centre, and so numerous on the upper 

 side of the top branches, as to give that part of the tree quite 

 the appearance of a large candelabrum full of wax-lights ; 

 scales concave, closely imbricated, and of a leathery texture, 

 from three quarters to an inch broad, and one inch deep on the 

 exposed part, with the upper margin transversely elliptic, 

 quite entire on the edges, and very thin ; bracteas small; strap- 

 shaped, a little contracted at the top, crenated along the edges, 

 and furnished with a central point, and entirely hidden by the 

 scales ; seeds soft, full of turpentine, somewhat three-cornered, 

 and furnished with an oblique wedge-shaped wing. 



A handsome tree, of a pyramidal shape, thickly furnished 

 with vertical branches to the ground, and growing fifty feet 

 high, and three feet in diameter, with the stem covered with a 

 thick ashy-grey coloured bark, full of deep fissures when old. 



It is found on the Taurian and Caramanian mountains in 

 Asia Minor ; M. Kotschy discovered it in one of the valleys of 

 the Taurus, to the north-west of the great Cilician defile, called 

 Gullah Boghos, and on the southern slope of the great moun- 

 tain chain called Bulgardah, in Cilicia, at an elevation of from 

 3,000 to 7,000 feet above the sea, mostly in immense forests, 

 or intermixed with the Cedar of Lebanon. The Mongolians 

 call it *' Chadsura" (green and white), and the late Dr. Fischer 

 considered it only a variety of the Siberian Pitch Fir (Picea 

 Pichta), a kind which it certainly very much resembles, but 

 diflfers from in having very much longer cones, and leaves more 

 silvery beneath. 



It is quite hardy, and called " Tchugatskoy " (strong-scented 

 Fir) by the Kussians. 



