30 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



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about one and one half in diameter, obtuse, often with short 

 titted center, from the somewhat more depressed or retracted 

 surrounding, and still rarer abruptly acute, when broken off 

 the based portion, like A. Concolor (?), deeply cupped by the 

 much bent scales and seeds, dull velvety greenish or parrot- 

 bronze tinge ; scales one quarter broader than long, the outer 

 air margin of the segment of a rather smaller circle than its 

 very close kin, Concolor (perhaps only a variety); bracts under 

 each scale short and included, or hid in the cone; this is 

 oblong, obcordate, finely cut- toothed on the end and sides, 

 mostly the central sinus or notch with a rather long lance- 

 pointed mucro; this thin appendage beneath scales, it will 

 be noticed, is narrowed below or wedge-shaped ; seeds with 

 an American ax-like wing, about as broad as long, ripening 

 in November, or farther north a month earlier. The wood 

 is white and soft, when well seasoned makes the best of stiff 

 strong girths, etc. ; holds nails remarkably well ; makes good 

 inside work when protected from the weather, but is very 

 perishable when exposed. It is held, however, in little repute 

 by lumbermen as yet. This is the white fir of Oregon — from 

 beyond the Cascades of the Columbia River to the Pacific 

 Ocean, and from Frazer's River to Vancouver Island. 



Trees felled and left in contact with the earth, and so 

 exposed to the seasons, will utterly perish so as to be stamped 

 to powder under the heel of one's boot, in five or six years. 

 At its southern limits it seldom fruits, and the few cones 

 found seldom or never produce good seed. 



A lofty tree, most aptly named for its most superb grandeur 

 and beauty, worthy of all care and culture, the finished 

 columnar shaft losing its slender lower limbs, for lack of light 

 and air, very early in the native forest; rising almost palm- 

 like in its exaltation, crowned with short cone, or flatfish like 

 the pine or quite as the cedars of Lebanon, but with no great 

 spread, and elegant smoothish or fissures shallow and openly 

 spread, and thin, iron-gray bark, silver-lined foliage; fruit, 

 as it were, brazen plumaged birds perched upon the topmost 

 boughs, and you have a sylvan object of ever increasing 

 delight to the beholder. The sapwood is about in the ratio 

 of one ninth the diameter, and requires from thirty to fifty 

 years to ripen into heart-wood, with due allowance for varia- 

 bility of growth. 



In describing trees, some allowance must be made for what 

 is called the "habitat," etc. A few general remarks may be 

 allowed in this connection, to illustrate this principle : Take. 

 as an example, the leaves. Now suppose an author to say of 

 them, "more markedly two-rowed." To test the absolute 

 value of this and similar manifest usual characteristics, upon 

 which we are apt to rely, let us choose a similar case, unques- 

 tioned, as a standard of comparison. Let that be the Pacific 



