41 



The recently discovered Large ( lone (Macrocarpa) variel 

 of San Philipe ( anon, and elsewhere in the southern part of 

 the State and to Arizona, perhaps requires more than mere 

 enumeration. The form of this tree is rather more broadly 

 eonie. branches more horizontal, open, and airy in appear- 

 ance, leaves longer; cones, scales, and seeds larger, etc. This 

 large tree attains to one hundred feet or more high, five to 

 six feet in diameter — quite as much diversity from the type 

 as the restored Pinus Jeffreyi from the old ponderosa. 



Woodmen and workers distinguish this one species into 

 two kinds (or qualities?), Red Fir and Yellow Fir — the former 

 with red, hard, brittle, and knotty heart or matured wood ; 

 singular enough, and contrary to the usual custom with other 

 timbers, this heart-wood, by common consent, all reject as 

 relatively worthless. The other kind has softer wood, with 

 scarcely a feeble tinge of yellow: this is easier worked and 

 highly valued, but cleemed less lasting. Much more appro- 

 priate common names would be Red and Yellow Spruce. 



MERTEN'S PACIFIC HEMLOCK SPRUCE. 



(Tsuga [Abies] Mertensiana). 



" hemlock tree ! hemlock tree! how faithful are thy branch 

 Green, not alone in Summer time. 

 But in Winter's frost and rime! 

 hemlock tree ! hemlock tree ! how faithful are thy branches '." 



Gorman of Longfellow. 



"T" J~ AST forests of this Pacific Hemlock extend along the 

 \/ coast from California to Alaska. Farther north it 

 constitutes the main characteristic feature of the 

 Pacific Sylva. This most charming tree of all the evergreens, 

 from youth to prime, is of softened conic outline from dense 

 broad ground-base, to light and airy leading tip ; later on in 

 life of spiry, steeple-top attenuation of branch and stem, 

 throughout richly mantled with the finest feminine delicacy 

 of foliage, yet beautifully infilled with the most exquisite 

 variety and grace by numerous hairy, slender, and pliant 

 tiny little twiglets, feathered, here in California, with the 

 briefest leaf and thinnest of all the fan-form horizontal 

 expanse of spray known to these trees. This is even more 

 spiry than the Eastern Canadian, and only rounded-conic 

 when broken off by storms or far advanced in old age. These 

 tall spruces, farther north, are clad in denser masses of darker 

 green verdure — twigs of no longer strictly two-rowed foliage, 



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