28 FOREST TRBflfl OF CALIFORNIA. 



radiant beaded jewels, thus sparkling all over, from crown to 

 foot, with gold and dewy diamonds, contribute no little to 

 effective beauty and to more oriental ornamentation of this 

 fringe fir. According to our taste, this is the loveliest of 

 ( lalifornia's silver firs — most ornamental, most valuable — but 

 it is only a half-hardy tree, not well suited to great extremes 

 of temperature nor exposure to violent winds. So far as we 

 know, this fir is only found on the Santa Lucia Mountains, 

 latitude thirty-six of Southern California, altitude from four 

 to six thousand feet. 



Not being likely to confound this fir with any other, our 

 excuse for a brief specific note, is its rarity : Buds large and 

 pointed, leaves from two to three inches long, line-like, entire, 

 flat, rigid, sharp pointed, varnished green, and no breathing 

 pores above; one half twisted at the base and in two rows; 

 two silvery gray lines below, cones egg-shaped, four inches 

 long by two to two and one half inches thick ; scales smooth 

 unlike any other fir, roundish kidney form, the narrow 

 wedge-like claws short, falls off tardily from the fixed axis, 

 the hidden part of the protruding bract, wedged, rigid, 

 leathery, three-toothed at the top and these teeth again finely 

 subtoothed, whole form short and roundish: the straw-like 

 mid-ribs stick far out from between the scales from one to 

 one and one half inches, and spreading or gently recurving 

 they loosely fringe the whole surface of the cone and are 

 beaded with turpentine ; seeds oblong, wedge-shaped, four 

 sided, skin light leaden gray, wings slightly obversely egg- 

 form, of membrane-like texture, entire, flat, and thin. 



THE GRAND SILVER FIR 



(Abies [Pieea" grandis.) 



" Rose the fira with cones (like birds) upon them." — Longfellow. 



THE perfect elegance of this trim lofty silver fir is greatly 

 enhanced by the relatively small diameter of the body. 

 A tree may be from two to three hundred feet high and 

 the trunk barely four to eight feet in diameter, with a marvel- 

 ously clean shaft from eighty to one hundred, or even one 

 hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty feet, as even and 

 true as if laid off by line. The firs of this vicinity, say on 

 the coast within one hundred miles or so of San Francisco, 

 average one hundred and sixty feet high by two to three feet 

 in diameter, although a few reach two hundred, by six to 



