GREAT WHITE SILVIO II FIR. 31 



Hemlock Spruce (Tsuga [Abies] Mertensiana) t • which also 

 grows in the same localities as the above (/rain/ is, both at 

 their hotter southern limits, say one hundred miles north of 

 San Francisco. Here both become more distinctly, nay, 

 strictly, two-rowed (distichous). This Mertcn's Spruce or 

 Western Pacific Hemlock, north to British Columbia, has 

 densely crowded leaves distributed more or less all around 

 the twiglets, and the leaves are therefore exceedingly dense 

 there, yet it becomes here perfectly two-rowed, shorter, and 

 sparser, etc. — is, indeed, the airiest and gauziest of all gauzy 

 trees ever seen. As with spruce, so with fir — grandis thickens 

 towards the colder coast and mountains north — hence the 

 variety densi folia / but if this is deemed a good variety 

 because denser foliaged, then, by parity of reasoning, from 

 similar local characteristics, we must also have a variety of 

 Pacific hemlock spruce, and also varieties of varieties, and so 

 on to the end of the chapter. 



As qualities of timber, etc., sometimes also follow these 

 diversified forms, it may be useful to designate many varie- 

 ties, as woodmen and workmen are in the habit of doing, for 

 their own convenience and use ; and, as science has the same 

 end, so, at length, also scientifically refined discriminations 

 ever keep pace with the most thorough knowledge, and are 

 useful so long as they do not transcend the practicable. 



GREAT WHITE SILVER FIR. 



(Abies [Picea] eoneolor.) 



"Here spiry firs extend their lengthened ranks — 

 There violets blossom on the sunny banks." — Faivkes. 



AMONG the most stately, elegant, and useful firs of the 

 Pacific, with respect to all points of estimation, cer- 

 tainly none excel the white fir of the mountains. The 

 cheerful contrast of light bark of body and limbs, as the eye 

 catches glimpses of them here and there from beneath the 

 soft starry mantle of living green, recalls virgin linen, white 

 and clean, gleaming aloft from out the exalted spires of 

 " God's first temples" — the primeval groves. 



In its young state, this fir is half-spire form, the whirled 

 branches spreading horizontally as do branchlets and final 

 sprays, forming flattened fan-like distributions ; the line-like 

 leaves in two regular rows, one on this side and the other 

 that of the twigs, as it were, winged ; the pinnae leaves usually 

 notched at the end, two to two and one half and sometimes 



