THE SPRUCE FIR. 



381 



glazed white summits of Mont Blanc, or the 

 Jungfrau, rising over the interminable forests of 

 Spruce Firs, which clothe the bases of the moun- 

 tains, whilst some such gigantic specimens as those 

 we have been noticing rise in groups among the 

 rocks before us, many of them shivered, broken, 

 and maimed by tempests, their dark forms op- 

 posed to all the prismatic hues of some immense 

 gorgeous glacier, which nourishes in its immense 

 bosom a mighty river that is doomed to fertilize 

 and enrich whole kingdoms." It here attains a 

 height of a hundred and fifty, or even a hundred 

 and eighty feet, diminishing regularly in size, till 

 it approaches the boundary of perpetual frost. 

 The whole of the Hartz Mountains are covered 

 with it, and it affords both fuel and timber for the 

 mines and furnaces of that district. It is planted 

 or sown, and cut down in masses, like our coppice- 

 woods ; and self-sown seedlings supply the vacan- 

 cies created by every cutting. In France and 

 Germany, hedges, or rather lines of trees, serving as 

 boundary-fences, and at the same time as sources 

 of shelter and shade, are used in the same way as 

 thorn-hedges are in England. They produce an 

 enormous quantity of timber for fencing and fuel, 

 every twenty or thirty years ; and every year the 

 fall of their leaves supplies manure. With us, 

 however, the Spruce Fir, unless planted in pe- 

 culiar situations, both as it regards soil and aspect, 

 does not thrive. It produces abundance of cones 

 at an early age, but soon dwindles away and dies. 



In the country bordering on the Baltic, a Spruce 

 forest is a very different thing. This is the 

 land of Pines, — lofty, erect battalions, — their bark 

 as smooth as the mast of a ship — their branches 



