HARDY ON NOVA SCOTIAN CONIFERS. 123 



granite boulder is to be seen its hardy seedling, and tbe little 

 plant has a far better chance of becoming a tree than its brother 

 in the swamp ; for one day, as frost and increasing soil open the 

 fissure, its roots will ci-eep out and fasten on the earth beneath. 



As a valuable timber tree the Black Spruce ranks next to the 

 Pine, attaining a height of 70 to 100 or even 150 feet, it forms 

 excellent material, strong and elastic, for spars and yards of vessels, 

 and is converted into all descriptions of sawed lumber — deals, 

 boards, and scantlings. From the young sprays of the Black Spruce 

 is prepared the decoction, fermented with molasses, which is the 

 celebrated spruce beer of the American settler, a cask of which is 

 always kept by the good farmer's wife in the hot, thirsty days of 

 haymaking.* To the Indian, the roots of this tree which shoot out 

 under the moss to a great distance, 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. 



As an ornamental tree in the open and cultivated glebe, the 

 Black Spruce is very appropriate : the numerous and gi-acefully 

 curved branches, the regular and acute cone shape of the mass, the 

 clear purplish-grey stem and the beautiful bloom which the abund- 

 ant cones assume in June, all enhance the picturesqueness of a tree 

 which is long-lived, and, moreover, never outgrows its ornamental 

 appearance unless confined in dense woodland groves. 



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 situation. In the latter, the foli- 

 age being frequently of a lighter tinge of green, strengthens the 

 supposition. No specific difierences have, however, been detected 

 between the trees. 



inches of the surfaoe. The centre of these bogs, often called cariboo bogs by rea- 

 son of this deer frequenting them in search of the lichen, cladonia rangiferinus is 

 generally quite bare of spruce clumps, which fringe the edge of the surrounding 

 for the trees increasing in height as they recede from the open bog. 



* Essence of spruce is obtained by evaporating the decoction of young shoots 

 in water mixed w^ith sugar and molasses, to the consistence of honey. 



