32 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



three inches long, indeed longer than any other Pacific fir. 

 Rather gray-green, stomata-breathing pores, confined to the 

 middle line but never absent; in older trees the lower limbs 

 only have notched leaves — this last feature, however, is not 

 specific and peculiar if more common; higher, they are then 

 shorter, broader, rounded above, ends blunt or very short, 

 sharpened; on flowering and fruiting branchlets they even 

 become keeled above and almost quadrangular — stomata 

 cover the entire upper surface, and they are not then so 

 strictly two-rowed. 



The White Silver Fir is a tree from two to three hundred 

 feet high, usually four to eight feet in diameter, often with a 

 neat naked shaft from fifty to one hundred feet or more ; top 

 always more pyramidal even in age than the great magnifi- 

 cent Red Fir (A. \_Picea~] magnified), probably only another 

 form of nob i! is, with its colossal dark cinnamon-red body or 

 bark. Found in the California sierras up to seven thousand 

 feet altitude, the most eminently prosperous belt of the best 

 timber lies between four thousand and four thousand five 

 hundred feet of western and northwestern exposures (for 

 present purposes we omit its Rocky Mountain, New Mexico, 

 and Utah ranges east, or Oregon) ; at least here the timber 

 is never as good above or below the above mentioned limits, 

 nor, if lacking in any one of the best suited conditions — all of 

 which we do not pretend to notice — as average temperature, 

 rainfall, and the like. 



Messrs. Toll Brothers, of Dutch Flat, have tried stringers 

 for horse-tramways, three by six inches — half in earth, half 

 in air, the alternate wet and dry test — some of spruce, sugar- 

 pine, yellow or heavy pine, redwood, and white fir, among 

 these, all tried in the same locality and at the same time, 

 this White Silver Fir outlasted them all. AVe examined 

 these, and were it not manifest from many experiments, we 

 should hardly have anticipated it superior to our Pitch Pine 

 (P. Ponderosa). Dr. Parry informs me that a like reputation 

 holds good, in that where it is preferred for railroad ties, etc. 

 This fir does not warp like spruce, red fir, or Jeffrey's Owen's 

 Valley variety of P. Ponderosa, with their marvelous efforts 

 to get away from fences, etc. It makes choice ceilings, shrinks 

 least of all, and takes less paint than any other lumber, as it 

 abounds in (tannic?) acid. Spikes and nails never loosen in 

 the lumber as in other timbers, so that as entire or half-earth 

 sleepers, outside or inside work, it may be well commended. 

 Another point, it should be remarked is, that the wood is 

 not too hard to work, but soft in the region named, nor is the 

 grain unsightly and coarse like spruce ; besides, it is famous 

 as the stiffest, strongest mountain timber, both for transverse 

 horizontal strain and crushing perpendicular pressure, hence 

 its far-famed esteem in mines, for bridges, and for strong 



