382 



THE SPRUCE FIR. 



regular as a ladder, varying scarce an inch in 

 girth in fifty feet of growth — for miles interrupted 

 only by a leaning, never by a crooked, tree — with 

 an army of sturdy liliputians clustering round 

 their bases — fifty heads starting up where one yard 

 of light is admitted. What becomes of all the 

 pruning, and trimming, and training — the days of 

 precious labour spent on our own woods ? Nature 

 here does all this and immeasurably better for 

 her volunteers, who stand closer, grow faster, and 

 soar higher than the carefully planted and trans- 

 planted children of our soil. Here and there a 

 bare jagged trunk, and a carpet of fresh-hewn 

 boughs beneath, shew where some peasant urchin 

 has indulged in sport which with us would be 

 amenable to the laws, namely, mounted one of 

 these grenadiers of the forest, hewing off* every 

 successive bough beneath him, till, perched at a 

 giddy height aloft, he clings to a tapering point 

 which his hand may grasp. The higher he goes, 

 the greater the feat, and the greater the risk to 

 his vagabond neck in descending the noble and 

 mutilated trunk." Sometimes the woods are 

 composed of " mingled trees, the fresh hues of the 

 oak contrasting with the black Pines ; and close 

 to us stood a noble Spruce, split from top to base 

 by the lightning of last week's storm, one half 

 resting against a neighbouring stem, the other 

 pale, bleeding, and still erect. Below, lay forty 

 feet of the luxuriant head, with enormous splin- 

 ters, rent in longitudinal lines, while the ground 

 was furrowed in deep angular troughs by the last 

 strength of the fluid. Here and there the sun, 

 shooting across a Silver Birch trunk, like the 

 light across a liquid human eye, or illuminating 



