HEMLOCK SPRUCES 127 
of planting, or ever been called to repentance for 
having planted. There is no more goodly tree in 
Christendom. 
It would make an interesting incursion into the 
realms of imagination to hazard an idea as to what 
impressions a Hemlock Spruce would create in the 
mind of anyone suddenly called into the presence 
of tree-life for the first time and asked to dissociate 
them one from another. If, for instance, they were 
called in before the Flood,—a rather extreme meta- 
morphic process once suggested by Voltaire—and 
had placed before them branches, say, of a Hemlock, 
Silver Fir, and Yew, for the purposes of dissociation, 
generically and tribally, what opinion would they 
form of their relative alikes and unalikes? 
There may be said to be a certain rough-and-ready 
resemblance between the leaves of the Hemlock and 
those of the Silver Fir, since the leaf appearance of 
the Hemlock has a look of a minuter edition of the 
Silver Fir. That is a result which takes very little 
disposing of to-day, but it might have taken longer 
once, and not have been arrived at so easily. It 
will be seen on closer inspection that— 
(1) The leaves of the Hemlock are mounted on 
those same little projections that the 
Spruces’ are, and the Silver Firs’ arising from 
circular bases are not, as has been pointed 
out on previous pages. 
(2) The bark of the Hemlock is red-brown, that 
of the Silver Fir of a grey colour. 
. (3) The shape of the head of the tree and the 
foliage arrangement are more after the 
manner of the generality of hard-wood 
trees, and look as broad in effect as they are 
high, while the Silver Fir towers to the 
heavens with church-spire grandeur. The 
