﻿172 Canadian Record of Science. 



as to render elimination of errors possible, and that mere 

 ;iTeneral impressions received by travellers over the country, 

 although often of great practical value, are not to be 

 regarded as absolute scientific results.^ In the early days, 

 when Douglas and Thomas Drummond were solitary 

 wanderers over the Continent, and Menzies was touching 

 the coast at Chebucto and nameless points on the 

 Xorthern Pacific shores, every scrap of information, and 

 especially tlieir notes on range of species, was of substan- 

 tial value, but now we have the means of working out 

 problems by more systematic and scientific methods, and . 

 of eliminatinc: the errors of individual observation.^ 



2. PiCEA NIGRA, Link, in Linnaea xv., p. 520. 



The black spruce is a sombre tree, the old bark of dark 

 color, the surface of yonng shoots of the year of a 

 dark brown, and clothed with a short sparse fur of thick 

 short curved trichomes. The foliage is of a decidedly 

 dark green color, but distinctly glaucous or hoary. The 

 leaves are short, almost straight, radiating from the 

 branch in a bottle brush fashion at a nearly uniform angle 

 except that they are turned away from the lower surface 

 of the branch. The leaves (as in other species) vary 

 in size with vigor of tree, but are always much shorter 

 than in the other species, and blunt at the apex. 

 The cones, when young, are of a deep purple, or purpura- 

 scent color, becoming reddish-brown as they ripen, 

 darkening with age, and ultimately changing to a deep 

 dark gray-black when old. The other species drop their 

 cones during the first winter after they are formed ; 

 P. nigra retains them for several years, the recent crop of 

 the year being near the top of the tree mostly, the 

 previous years next below, that of the year before further 



1 See Trans. Royal Soc. of Canada, Vol. II., Sec. iv., p. 16. 



2 Abies arctica, Murray, Seenian's Journal, 1867, \>. 273. cum ic, is .referred 

 by Parlatore as a variety ot alba.— DC, Prodromus, XVI., p. 414. On same page there 

 is description of something no doubt quite different, Abiesxirctica, Cunningh., ex Henk. 

 & Hochst. This is referred to rubra. 



