I. 2. THE HEMLOCK. 77 
]. 2. Tar Spruce. Abies. Jussieu. 
The hemlock and the spruce belong to a genus distinguished 
from the pines in their general appearance, and by the follow- 
ing particular differences: their leaves are solitary and very 
short; the male flowers are in solitary aments; the cones are 
pendulous, or dependent; the scales of the cones are thin at 
their edge; the fruit comes to maturity ina single year. They 
are evergreen, resinous trees, of an erect, pyramidal shape, 
natives of Europe, Asia and America. 
Three species are found in Massachusetts :— 
1. The Hemlock has small, pointed, pendulous, terminal 
cones, and thin, flat leaves; 
2. The Black Spruce has dependent, egg-shaped cones, with 
scales waved and jagged at the edge; 
3. The White Spruce has cones longer, also dependent, and 
spindle-shaped, with scales smooth and entire at the edge. 
Both have four-angled, awl-shaped leaves. 
I. 2. Sp.1. Tue Hemuoce. Abies Canadensis. Michaux. 
Figured in Lambert’s Pinus; Plate 45. 
Michaux ; Sylva III, 149, and beautifully in 
Loudon ; VIII, Plate 335, a, d. 
The hemlock spruce, or hemlock, as, throughout New Eng- 
land, it is almost universally called, is the most beautiful tree 
of the family. It is distinguished from all the other pines by the 
softness and delicacy of its tufted foliage; from the spruce by 
its slender tapering branchlets, and the smoothness of its limbs ; 
and from the balsam fir by its small terminal cones, by the 
irregularity of its branches, and the gracefulness of its whole 
appearance. 
The young trees, by their numerous irregular branches, 
clothed with foliage of a delicate green, form a rich mass of 
verdure; and when, in the beginning of summer, each twig is 
terminated with a tuft of yellowish-green recent leaves, sur- 
mounting the darker green of the former year, the effect, as an 
