554 General Notes. [September, 
The leaves of my specimens are not glaucous above, but underneath only. 
or not at all, this character not being a constant one. This tree is there 
known to the Mormon lumbermen as “ black balsam” and makes an 
excellent quality of lumber. It is rarely found above 8500 feet altitude, 
or below 7000 feet. 
But there was another tree there, very much resembling this in its 
botanical characters, though differing widely in other respects, which I 
well knew to be a different thing, and as it answered to no description I 
could find, I became deeply interested in it. In altitudé it commences 
just where the other leaves off, and continues on up nearly to the timber 
line, or over 11,000 feet altitude. I found it both in the basin of the 
Sevier River, above Gunnison, and also far to the eastward across the 
divide on the Colorado side, high up on the slopes‘of Aquarius Plateau 
and Thousand Lake Mountain. This tree is distinguished by the lum- 
bermen of that region as “ white balsam.” It is also known as “ pump- 
kin pine,” the wood being rather spongy and poor for lumber. But 
otherwise it is a much finer tree than A. concolor, being very tall and 
straight, with few limbs from its lower trunk. Of both species I brought 
back specimens, not only of the leaves, cones, etc., but also sections of 
the trunk for exhibition at the Centennial, where they may now be seen 
in Dr. Vasey’s excellent collection sent from the Department of Agri- 
culture. I also sent specimens to Dr. Engelmann for identification, from 
whose report, as follows, it appears that both the species above mentioned 
have been heretofore confounded under the name of A. grandis Lindl., 
inapplicable to either. 
“ Abies subalpina is the provisional name Dr. Engelmann gives to that 
fir which occupies the highest wooded regions up to the limits of vegeta- 
tion in the Rocky Mountains, from Colorado northward and westward to 
Oregon. In lower altitudes it is replaced in Colorado and Utah by 4. 
concolor, and in Oregon by A. grandis. All the specimens sent from 
Colorado by Parry, Hall, and others belong here ; but in Oregon collec- 
tions it is mixed with A. grandis, and in both regions has been designated 
by this latter name. Its nearest affinity is not to any western Abies, 
but to the eastern A. balsamea, of which it may prove a geographical 
variety. Its leaves are shorter than those of A. grandis, those of tie 
lower sterile branches are slightly emarginate, on the upper side grooved 
and without stomata. The leaves of vigorous shoots and of cone-bearing 
branchlets are acute, above convex and provided with stomata. 
cones are purplish brown, the scales scarcely wider than long; the pale 
are variable in this as in most other species, and not of much oe : 
value. Mr. A. Murray has, in an Oregon specimen collected by pr 
Lyall, noticed this difference of leaves of sterile and fertile branches, nae 
therefore named it A. bifolia; this, however, is a misnomer, 10 ting 
something very different from what he intended, and cannot stand. 
“In a paper shortly to be published in the Transactions of the St. Louis 
