﻿174 Canadian Record of Science. 



processes (trichomes), which arise especially around the 

 edges of the fiat basal plates of the leaf-bases, variously 

 called peg-processes, sterigmata, etc. The cones are of 

 a bright chestnut color, regularly ovate in form. The 

 wood is softer than that of the black spruce, it is also less 

 enduring under open air exposure, as we know from 

 experience ; every season the red spruce poles have to 

 be replaced more frequently than the black in fences. 



The best general description that has hitherto been 

 published of P. rubra is that of ray late friend, William 

 Gorrie, in the Transactions of the Botanical Society 

 of Edinburgh, Vol. X., p. 353. Mr. Gorrie's description 

 was taken from the tree as observed by him in the 

 plantations and pleasure grounds in Britain, but, so far as 

 it goes, it corresponds entirely with the tree as seen in the 

 Nova Scotian woods : — " The red spruce fir, or Newfound- 

 land red pine, is found in Nova Scotia, some parts of 

 Lower Canada, and northward to Hudson Bay, but is not 

 included in Dr. Asa Gray's Flora of the Northern United 

 States. It is said to be a better and finer tree than either 

 of its allies — the black and white spruces — from which it 

 further differs in being entirely devoid of that glaucous 

 green by which the leaves of these two are distinguished. 

 It is, in fact, exactly like the common Norway spruce 

 in the color both of its foliage and young branches, 

 but differs from it in its thinner and more slender growth, 

 shorter leaves, and much smaller cones. From this close 

 resemblance in color of rubra and excclsa, Americans call 

 the latter the red spruce of Europe. Like the alba, the 

 rubra drops its cones in the course of the first winter and 

 succeeding spring, while those of nigra are retained on the 

 tree for two or more years. Like its two American 

 associates, alba and nigra, rubra seems to delight in moist 

 soils containing a proportion of peat and moist upland 

 climates. Those now growing at Tynehead were reared 

 from seeds gathered in Newfoundland, and a portion 



