SPRUCE FIR. 193 
A landowner called on us one autumn previous to his going 
abroad during winter, and requested to be furnished with 
plants to form a plantation of a few acres, which he had 
enclosed from a field of arable land, for shelter and ornament. 
On our producing a list and marking kinds which we con- 
sidered adapted for his purpose, the only sort he objected to 
was the Norway spruce, stating that from some peculiarity 
in the soil it would not grow, and although he admired the 
common spruce very much, yet no spruce but the Douglasii 
came to anything on his property. The Norway tree was 
ignored at the time, but it afterward became apparent that 
no Norway spruce existed on the property, and that the white 
American species was mistaken for it. 
A. Douglasii (Lindley): Douglas’s Spruce Fir.—This is a 
fast-growing magnificent tree, a native of the banks of the 
Columbia river, in North-West America. It was introduced 
by Douglas the celebrated Scotch collector, whose name it 
bears. 
The first plants in England were produced from seed in 
1827. One of these planted at Dropmore attained the height 
of nineteen feet in ten years, when it began to produce cones, 
At that place the tree now forms very heavy timber, where 
some of the best specimens stand upwards of ninety feet in 
height. The tree is found to be quite hardy, and is much 
esteemed throughout the country. 
For some time the best Scotch production of this species 
in the far north stood at Coul House, in Ross-shire. It 
measured 47 feet 6 inches in height, with a trunk six feet 
in circumference, at the age of twenty-four years; but on 
account of its standing in an exposed situation it only 
advanced ten feet in additional height during the next ten 
years, when its trunk measured 8 feet 6 inches in girth. 
Other trees in the north, much younger, but better sheltered, 
are now far loftier. 
In Morayshire some fine trees of this species embellish the 
lawn at Seapark. At Brodie Castle the first generation of 
this tree, grown from seed produced there, stand about twenty 
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