OMORICA, OR FLAT-LEAVED SPRUCES 119 
reference presumably of his connection with the 
Society of the Jesuits, and as he signed himself— 
and the lesser but still renowned members of their 
family, selecting with crafty care choice specimens 
of wood from the best of their growths ; of another, 
old Jacob Steiner of Salzburg, the German fiddle 
designer, exploring the woodlands and mountain- 
sides in quest of them, and tapping their trunks, 
like a hungry woodpecker, in zealous endeavour to 
discover which responded most musically to the 
vibrations of desired sound, or on other occasions 
standing on the precipitous edge of some gorge or 
ravine, and hearkening eagerly for a stray sound of 
some tone or overtone as they toppled over, and 
crashed down crag and rock, felled by the hand 
of skilled fellers. 
It seems then, even from these few particulars of 
its back history, that the Spruce of the higher alti- 
tudes, in those latitudes and the outlying mountain 
lands of Lombardy, has yet much of its history to be 
written of, and more than that, many of its ancient 
secrets to be rediscovered, and perhaps some of those 
lost chords of its musical mysteries to be reawakened, 
if it is ever to attain a well-deserved apotheosis. 
OMORICA, OR FLAT-LEAVED SPRUCES 
Group I.—Honpoensis, AJANENSIS, SITKENSIS, 
MORINDOIDES (SHOOTS GLABROUS) 
Yet through the gray and sombre wood 
Against the dusk of fir and pine. es 
WHITTIER. 
The flat-leaved Spruces are so called for the all- 
sufficient reason that their leaves are flat, like the 
Abies, and not four-sided as the afore-discussed 
Eupicee ; on this point they have strayed from the 
fold of the true Picee. That they are not ranged 
with the Abies is due to the fact that their leaves 
