FRINGE-CONIC SILVEB PIE. 27 



FRINGE-CONE SILVER FIR. 



(Abies [Piceal braeteata.) 



" The groves were God's first temples." — Bryant, 



THIS exceedingly elegant steeple-shaped Fringe-Cone 

 Fir is of the most extraordinary aspiring beauty, and 

 quite unlike any other silver fir of the Pacific. The 

 general outline approaches that of the White Spruce (Picea 

 lAbiei\ alba) in its best types, simulating the form but not the 

 habit of the Lombardy poplar, for the short limbs of this 

 merely strictly shaped tree are not upright, as in that — the 

 Oriental Cypress (C. Sempervirens) and Irish Yew {Var.fasti- 

 giata of T. baccata) — but the lower branches, from horizontal 

 at least, are often bent back in the usual typical tented style 

 of the spiry spruces; although the limbs above the middle 

 and near the summit are mostly horizontal or spreading, and 

 very slender, yet exceedingly tough and reliable even when 

 long dead — arranged in whirls ; but there is scarcely strength 

 in the main leader body of the very tender long attenuated 

 top to make it at all safe to climb to the cones, which, as in 

 all the firs, sit upright, like birds upon the branches ; and if 

 neither apparently, with figure and metaphor, nor actually 

 fringed with a crown of gold, yet the fruit is worth many 

 times its weight in gold, so exceedingly scarce and valuable 

 is it esteemed. 



This invaluable, rare, and hitherto little known fir, rises 

 from- one to two hundred feet high, and from two to four feet 

 in diameter; trunk as trim and straight as an arrow, but 

 full of knots that extend well to the center; branching so low, 

 it furnishes little or no proper lumber, but is a perfect pattern 

 of sylvan perfection on the symmetrical plan. Arctic or 

 Alpine trees of this extremely attenuated type — the slender 

 parts are frequently broken in outline by the severity of their 

 clime, and hence exhibit more variety, often bordering upon 

 the fantastic — but these are so sheltered by the deep gorges 

 in which they grow, and being so thickly branched below, as 

 well as throughout, and clad in a light green dress of silvery 

 sheened foliage nearly or quite to the feet, gives them the 

 most exquisitely delicate and elegantly feminine expression 

 it is possible to conceive. Besides the modest plumy-fringed 

 cones, evanishing up in the blue amid a kind of gossamery 

 webby haze, is eminently pleasing; the foliage is gemmed 

 with golden drops of gum, that glitter in. the sunlight like 



