2336 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 



for their colours ; and its oil sells it a higher price than any other. It is dis- 

 tilled with water, in the same manner as the other kinds of turpentine, and 

 the residuum is a kind of colophony ; a name applied to black resin, because 

 a natural hard resin, sometimes used in plasters, and said to be the product of 

 the Ddmmara orientalis, which is mentioned by Dioscorides, was brought from 

 Colophon, in Ionia. The proportions for making oil of turpentine from the 

 Strasburg turpentine are, 5 lb. of liquid resinous juice to 4 pints of water, 

 distilled in a copper alembic. This is the essential oil of turpentine; and, 

 if 1 lb. of it be redistilled with 4 pints of water, it is called rectified or aetherial 

 oil of turpentine. Both preparations are used, in small doses, as diuretics, 

 and in cases of rheumatism : they are also considered powerful styptics. In 

 farriery, the essential oil of turpentine is much used for strains and bruises, 

 and is found very efficacious. 



The Silver Fir in British Plantations. Though the silver fir has been planted 

 in some instances, in Britain, in masses, with a view to producing timber, yet its 

 principal use has been as an ornamental tree. Before the cedar of Lebanon be- 

 came so common, or was known to be so hardy as it has been since found to be, 

 the silver fir was planted near mansions, as a choice and a striking tree, which, 

 as the cedar does now, might distinguish the residence of the large landed 

 proprietor from those of his more humble neighbours. This it did, not only 

 by raising its pyramidal head above all other trees, but by its striking regu- 

 larity of form, fine dark green foliage, and candelabrum-like regular tiers of 

 branches. This regularity of form was, of course, objected to by the admirers of 

 the picturesque. Gilpin says : " The silver fir has very little to boast in point 

 of picturesque beauty. It has all the regularity of the spruce, but without its 

 floating foliage. There is a sort of harsh, stiff, unbending formality in the 

 stem, the branches, and in the whole economy of the tree, which makes it 

 disagreeable. We rarely see it, even in its happiest state, assume a pictu- 

 resque shape. Assisted it may be in its form, when broken and shattered , 

 but it will rarely get rid of its formality. In old age, it stands the best chance 

 of attaining beauty. We sometimes see it, under that circumstance, a noble 

 shattered tree, finely adorned with ivy, and shooting out a few horizontal 

 branches, on which its meagre foliage and tufted moss appear to advantage. 

 I may add that the silver fir is, perhaps, the hardiest of its tribe. It will out- 

 face the south-west wind ; it will bear, without shrinking, even the sea air : 

 so that one advantage, at least, attends a plantation of silver firs; you may 

 have it where you can have no other ; and a plantation of silver firs may be 

 better than no plantation at all." (For. Seen., i. p. 90.) " As to the pictu- 

 resque effect of this tree," Sir Thomas Dick Lauder observes, " we have seen 

 many of them throw out branches from near the very root, that twined and 

 swept away from them in so bold a manner, as to give them, in a very great 

 degree, that character which is most capable of engaging the interest of the 

 artist." (Laud. Gilp., i. p. 180.) The advantage of planting the silver fir, in 

 preference to the spruce, on stiff soils, Mr. Curtis of Glazenwood observes, 

 is that the one advances to a large timber tree, while the other stops at 20 ft. 

 or 30 ft. high, and becomes rusty and stunted. There are, in Essex, in the 

 neighbourhood of Glazenwood, silver firs of 100 ft. high, on soils in which the 

 spruce would not have attained half that height. 



Soil, Situation, fyc The silver fir, like all the other .//bietinae, will attain a 

 large size on soils of a vary opposite description; but a loam, rather rich and 

 deep than otherwise, appears to suit it best. It has attained its greatest 

 height, in soils of this description, at Studley and Castle Howard; but it has 

 also attained a very great height in sandy loam at Woburn Abbey, and on clay, 

 incumbent on a retentive clayey subsoil, at Panmure. It is in vain, says Bout- 

 cher, to plant silver firs in hot, dry, or rocky situations, where they com- 

 monly not only lose their top shoots, but their under branches soon become 



'I; and, in place of that lively shining verdure peculiar to them in a suit- 

 able -oil, they become of a pale languid hue; nay, he adds, " 1 have known 



of them about twenty years planted out in such soils, entirely destroyed 



