120 PICEZ, OR SPRUCE TREES 
are mounted on those little woody excrescences 
which professors call pulvini (or projections). Then, 
again, their leaves are spiny and pointed. This is 
all in accordance with the habits of Picee and not 
in accordance with the practice of the leaves of the 
Abies, which are dented at the apex.as a rule. 
They are also credited with only showing white 
stomata bands on the under-surface of the leaf.. To 
this statement, which most authorities have endorsed, 
we make differential and deferential demur, since 
on the higher branches of a Sitka Spruce here, over 
126 ft. high, we have found leaves with visible in- 
dications of stomata also on the upper-side. Indeed, 
the very leaves from the upper regions of. this: tree 
seem almost to belong to another specimen of the 
arboricultural race altogether. Although they have 
the same botanical characteristics, with: this ex- 
ception of stomata, an exception that does not 
descend to the leaves on the lower part of the same 
tree, they: are thicker in shape, and: more densely 
crowded in habit. The leaves in question. were sent 
to the authorities at Kew, and opinion arrived at 
endorsed. They were commented upon in the Ar- 
boricultural Journal, 1915-16 vols., by Bean and 
others. 
This little disturbance of the accepted theory that 
no flat-leaved Spruces exhibited stomata on both 
sides of the leaf, we should like to add, ought in more 
justice to be attributed to the officious action of a 
tree squirrel who had bitten off some top twigs of a 
high tree, rather than to any commonplace ob- 
servational tendencies on the part of the owner and 
writer. Palmam qui meruit ferat aes him who. has: 
deserved the palm, bear it). 
To differentiate at sight between the Sitka andthe 
Omorica would be no easy task for the amateur, had 
it not been for the fact that the Omorica is obligingly 
