36 



The seulptors may ply their chisels, the painters their pencils, the 

 literati their pens, or the poets sing to us their laudatory strains ; but 

 all their statues, paintings, portraitures, or laudations, are at best finite 

 arts, and can no more give us a perfect representation of a perfect 

 specimen of such a tree as Picea NobiUs—fhe ^sToble Silver Fir — than 

 they can transfer to stone, canvas, or paper the transient and trans- 

 forming glistening silvery dew-drops of early morn ere they amalgamate 

 with the adjacent atmosphere and superincumbent earth, losing their 

 globules each the other in, while the sun, in his transcendent glory, is 

 preparing to mark our diurnal meridian on the dial of time. A 

 thing of beauty is a joy for ever however true the fantasy may be, 

 no less true is the fact, that beauty and quality, or use and adornment, are 

 respectively very different things ; for so it happens that in this 

 section of the firs we have an assemblage all beautiful, and that in the 

 very highest degree ; yet, few of them can lay claim to even second- 

 class certificates as profitable timber trees. 



It will be observed, from what I have already stated, that the chief 

 value of the Silver Firs in this country is their beauty and usefulness 

 as ornamental trees ; yet some of them, as will be seen from the sequel, 

 produce tolerably good wood ; and, irrespective of their utility as 

 decorators, we should cultivate them on a more or less extended scale 

 for their timber. All of them require a good deep soil, and a more or 

 less sheltered situation fully to develop themselves ; but in most ordi- 

 nary soils they will do tolerably well, and will invariably produce 

 better quality though less quantity of timber when on high altitudes 

 and in poor soils, than when in low-lying situations and good soils 

 where their beauty and dimensions would be greater, and their timber 

 inferior. Almost all of them are sufiiciently hardy for our climate, and 

 grow freely, particularly in a young state, and after having established 

 themselves in the soil. For all kinds of ornamental planting they are, 

 indeed, well adapted ; bat all the most distinct and beautiful kinds 

 will be specially noticed, and all the less distinct and similar kinds 

 referred to the species to which they are allied. 



PiCEA AmabILIS : The Lovely Silver Fir. 



This is a Californian kind, varying from 150 to 250 feet in height; 

 with flat linear leaves about an inch long, irregularly but densely two- 

 rowed, bright green above, and glaucous below ; and cones about six inches 

 long and from two to three inches broad. A beautiful hardy kind; but 

 vastly inferior to its "Queen" Nobilis; and whoever may possess the 

 I^oble Silver Fir needs care but little for the Lovely Silver Fir; unless, 



