THE COMMON SILVER FIR 85 
is the Common Silver Fir, the mightiest and the 
highest of them all. 
As the Common Silver Fir is always a forthcoming 
feature on most wayside and woodland scenes, we 
have very little to say further of it here, unless it be 
to enter a caveat for the sake of the less initiated, 
and warn them not to be betrayed into any surprise, 
or deluded at any critical moment, by the different 
aspects and variety show that the leaves of this tree 
sometimes offer to observers, according to the different 
layers of its branches on which they grow. While 
on the lower stages they wear an orderly, combed 
and neatly parted appearance, of almost pectinate 
perfection, upon the upper often all these character- 
istics seem to have been relegated to the regions of 
a lost art. The leaves are apt to stand out all over 
the place and awry. They exhibit a crowded and 
comparatively shock-headed arrangement. Side by 
side they look like the foliage of two different trees, 
anyhow until more closely examined, and then—to 
those at least who know—they look, as they should, 
themselves. 
As it is quite an unusual occurrence for the majority 
of us to come into contact with the top boughs of 
trees that stand over a hundred feet high, this is a 
little attention to detail that we can only recommend . 
readers for their own edification to make the most of, 
when they happen across one of these giants pros- 
trated by storm, and levelled to the earth by the 
inevitable forces of the Fates and Furies... 
Witnesses of their doom may, perchance, with 
luck light upon another curious sight (as did the. 
writer), of the leaves on the extremity branchlets 
lying upturned, after the fall to earth of the tree, 
and the new ones growing on the wrong side and the 
opposite one to that on which they did before, when 
their parent stem led a straight and upright life. The 
