106 FAMILIAR TREES 



This Dryden translates : — 



" by Minerva's aid, a fabric rear'd, 

 Which like a steed of monstrous height appeared; 

 The sides were planked with pine." 



But Messrs. Lonsdale and Lee in their more literal 



prose render it : — 



" The leaders of the Greeks . . . build, with the aid of the divine 

 skill of Pallas, a horse as huge as a mountain, and form the sides of 

 interlacing planks of fir." 



Now on Mount Ida, the modern Kas Dagh, there is 

 no Spruce, but a form of the Silver Fir is abundant. 

 As this tree differs from the ordinary Silver Fir 

 {Abies pectina'ta D.C.) of Europe in having spinous- 

 pointed leaves and shorter cones, it has been named 

 as a variety A. p. E'qui Troja'ni. The Spruces 

 differ from the Pines, Larches, and Cedars in that 

 their leaves are arranged singly in a spiral along 

 elongated shoots, and not tufted or grouped on lateral 

 dwarf shoots. From the former group they are 

 further separated by the absence of any woody thick- 

 ening at the ends of the scales of their cones; -their 

 seeds, too, ripen in a single year. From the Firs 

 proper, of which the Silver Fir (A. pectinata D.C.) is 

 the best known, they differ in their leaves being four- 

 angled and prismatic in section, instead of flattened 

 and two-edged, and having stomata on the upper 

 surface; in the anthers splitting longitudinally; 

 and in their- cones hanging downwards after fertiUsa- 

 tion, and (after having shed their seeds) dropping off 

 whole instead of falling to pieces while on the tree. 



The Spruce is the loftiest of European trees, reach- 

 ing a height of 126 to 150 feet, or even, in its native 



