286 FAMILIAR TREES AND THEIR LEAVES. 



siderably browner and daller — in a word, they lack 

 color. It is easier to make this test after the branch- 

 lets have been kept long enough for the needles to 

 drop off. By comparing the three species it will 

 then be seen that the tiny twigs of the white spruce 

 are very light and perfectly smooth, while the black 

 and red spruce twigs are covered with tiny hairs 

 (see my drawings marked A, of magnified black 

 and white spruce twigs), and are much darker in 

 color. 



The bark of the trunk is brown and scaly, not 

 smooth and gray like that of the fir. In March, 

 spruce gum is gathered from the seams in the trunk. 



The red spruce is distributed over the country 

 from Maine to Pennsylvania and Minnesota; it ex- 

 tends southward along the Alleghany Mountains to 

 Georgia. There are immense tracts of it in the 

 mountain regions of IS^ew Hampshire and Maine, 

 and I know of one forest region comprising no less 

 than one hundred square miles which is almost ex- 

 clusively occupied by red spruce of the largest pro- 

 portions. This land lies in the heart of the White 

 Mountains, with Mounts Guyot and Bond on the 

 north, Willey, Nancy, and Tremont on the east, Kan- 

 kamagus, Osceola, Tecumseh, and Scar Ridge on the 

 south, and the Lafayette rang6 on the west. But 

 already the woodsman's axe has penetrated deeply 



