546 EVERGREEN TREES AND SHRUBS. 



created great enthusiasm among tree-growers. But out of tens of 

 thousands which have been imported and planted, there are pro- 

 bably not a hundred fine specimens in the country. Some are 

 scorched by the summer sun, and others cut down by the cold 

 of winter. Sargent thinks it may be acclimated in well- 

 drained, gravelly soils, and partial shade. We do not believe in 

 the shade, except for the soil in which it grows. Ellwanger & 

 Barry, at Rochester, many years since, imported thousands of 

 plants, and out of all, but one proved hardy. That one is now 

 twelve or fourteen feet high, feathered beautifully to the ground, 

 and grows in a deep, warm loam, exposed on all sides to the sun 

 and wind, though in a kind of shallow valley. They inform us that 

 all the trees grafted from this stock on- the roots of the Norway spruce, 

 have proved hardy. We have faith to believe, that if care is used 

 to get seed from the hardiest specimens growing in the most ex- 

 posed localities where they are indigenous, and grafted if necessary 

 on our native spruces, we may yet grow large trees of them. It is 

 not improbable that the seed usually obtained in India is from the 

 most beautiful specimens growing in favored locations nearest to 

 the English settlements, rather than from the more rugged and ex- 

 posed trees. However this may be, whoever plants it in the 

 northern States, must do so with the hope of growing it to large 

 size, qualified by the risk of losing it at any time. 



In its native country, the Himalayan spruce attains great size. 

 A specimen has been measured one hundred and sixty-five feet in 

 height, and another twenty feet in the circumference of the trunk. 

 These are the maximum measurements. It grows on the spurs of 

 the Himalaya mountains, on elevations from seven thousand to 

 eleven thousand feet above the sea, and is said to be found usually 

 higher up than the Deodar cedar. It might be supposed that it 

 would suffer more from the density of the air on the low levels of 

 our own great American plain than from the cold alone, though 

 this theory is contradicted by its success in England ! 



The Japanese have named this tree the Tiger's-tail fir, on ac- 

 count of the long pendulous branchlets on old trees resembling the 

 tail of a tiger. 



Douglass' Spruce Fir. Abies Douglassi. — This is one of the 



