Abies 725 



120 to 200 feet high, free from branches up to 80 to 120 feet, and as much 

 as 6 to 8 feet in diameter. He quotes Hochstetter,^ who measured in the 

 Greinerwald, near Unter-Waldau, at an elevation of 2563 feet, a silver fir blown 

 down by a storm, which was g^ feet in diameter at breast height and 200 feet long, 

 and produced 30 klafter of firewood. 



The silver fir is planted outside the area of its natural distribution in most parts 

 of France, in Belgium, and in western and northern Germany, but not beyond lat. 

 51" in eastern Prussia. It is occasionally planted in Norway, and at Christiana 

 has attained 68 feet in length by 3|- feet in girth. At Thlebjergene, near Trondhjem, 

 where, on the side of a hill, sloping down to the sea, with an easterly exposure, 

 a fine plantation,^ mainly of spruce and Scots pine, was made in 1872 and subsequent 

 years, — there are some splendid groups of silver fir, 30 to 40 feet in height, appar- 

 ently exceeding in rapidity of growth the native spruce beside it. It is met with in 

 gardens in the Baltic provinces of Russia, as in Lithuania where there is a small 

 wood near Grodno, and in Courland and Livonia ; here, however, it always remains 

 a small tree, never bears cones, and is much injured by severe winters. 



One of the most remarkable plantations in Europe is the one made by the 

 Hanoverian Oberforster, J. G. von Langen, in the Royal Park of Jaegersborg, near 

 Copenhagen, about 1765. I visited this place in 1908, and measured some of the 

 trees. I found that the largest now standing near the entrance at Klampenborg 

 was 125 feet by 12 feet 10 inches. This tree is figured in a work^ kindly sent me 

 by Skovrider H. Mundt. There are, however, many taller trees on the south 

 side of the main drive, two of which I found to be 140 feet by 9 feet, and 140 feet 

 by 8 feet in girth, respectively. I measured the girth of twenty trees out of sixty- 

 two which are growing on an area of 100 by 30 paces, and believe them to 

 average over 130 feet high, with an average girth of y^ feet. In Liitken's work full 

 details are given of the measurements of these trees taken in 1893, and confirmed 

 in 1898 by Oppermann, who found 432 trees, averaging 38*9 metres in height and 

 containing 1400 cubic metres per hectare; which is equal to 20,000 cubic feet per 

 acre in the round, or 15,700 feet English quarter-girth measure. My own hasty 

 estimate on the spot was about 12,000 feet English quarter-girth measure per acre. 

 These wonderful silver firs grow on a deep, sandy loam, on level ground near the 

 sea, and seem to have passed their prime. Some of their timber has been used as 

 rafters in the Secretariat hall of the new Raadhus at Copenhagen. 



A. pectinata'^ was brought to the eastern United States early in the nineteenth 

 century ; but it is not hardy even in the middle states. 



Witches' brooms and cankered swellings, due to the fungus ^cidium 

 elatinum, De Bary, are common on the silver fir in the continental forests ; and 

 are often seen in Ireland and the south-west of Scotland,^ though apparently rare 

 in England, where they have been noticed in Norfolk® and at Haslemere.' 



1 Hochstetter, Aus dim BShmenoalde, Allg. Augsb. Zeit. 1855, No. 182. Cf. Sendtner, Die Vegetations- Verhdltnisse 

 des Bayerischen IValdes (i860). 2 geen by Henry in 1908. 



* Liitken, Den Langenske Forstordning, p. 286, fig. 5 (Copenhagen, 1899). 



* Sargent, Silva N. Amer. xii. 100, adnot. (1898). ' Somerville, in Hartig, Diseases of Trees, Eng. trans. 179 (1894). 

 9 Trans. Norfolk and Norwich Naturalist^ Soc. vii. p. 255. ' Specimens at Kew. 



