CONIFERS. 33 



spreading horizontally, mostly ascending, though at their extremities 

 more or less recurved and pendent. The branchlets are also numerous, 

 long, and slender, and generally somewhat irregularly disposed in two 

 rows on the branches, and also more or less recurved and drooping, par- 

 ticularly when young, giving the branches a twiggy appearance and 

 fiat form. The buds are, compared with the length of the annual 

 shoots, few and distant, irregularly disposed along the shoots, and 

 most numerous near tbe tops, the tip or point bud being, the largest, 

 and all of them somewhat oval in form, bluntly pointed, covered with 

 fringed scales of a brownish colour, and comparatively non-resinous. 



Barkj this when young is yellowish-green in colour, and surcharged 

 with resinous juice; when old and matured, rough and rugged, and 

 greyish, or ashy-bro'mi coloured, and upon aged trees it is comparatively 

 very thick, being from six to twelve inches in diameter. 



In this fir we have combined utiKty and beauty, gigantic stature and 

 perfect symmetry, graceful form and pleasing colour, varjdng from Hght 

 to dark, and making its changes through all the shades and tints of 

 verdant green, as spring, summer, autumn, and winter in turn complete 

 the year. 



This fir Avas discovered by and named after Douglas, the persevering 

 explorer and plant-collector, who from the north-west sent home so 

 many of these noble trees which now adorn our landscape ; and this 

 majestic fir will perpetuate his name to future ages, for he well de- 

 serves to be remembered : He it was who surrounded by danger on every 

 side, and amid the most exciting scenes noted such notes in his journal 

 as : — " New or strange things seldom fail to make great impressions, 

 and we are often at first hableto overrate them," again, — "lest I should 

 never see my friends to teU them verbally, of these most beautiful and 

 immensely large trees." Poor Douglas seems in this paragraph to have 

 anticipated his fate, for his untimely death, and melancholy end in a 

 bulfalo-pit in the far west, prevented him from ever " seeing his friends 

 to tell them verbally of these trees." 



This fir is one of the most distinct, beautiful, and valuable ever 

 introduced into Britain. It is thorouglily hardy, sound in constitution, 

 of large dimensions, and very rapid in its growth ; not particularly 

 fastidious as to soil or situation, provided always the soil be in a sweet 

 and healthy condition, and the sub-soil cool and porous ; for even now 

 we have it growing, nay luxuriating, alike in the forests and parks of 

 England, in the alluvial vales and humid clime of Hibernia, in the 

 romantic glens and mountain dells of old Scotland, and in the debris 



D 



