The tree improves in size, height and vigor, with the latitude, for some degrees northward of this State. It is probably most perfect in the northern part of Maine or a little further north. It is found in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and throughout Canada, to latitude 65°, where it terminates with the paper birch.

Seven spruce trees of thirty-one years' growth, in the Botanic Garden, gave an average of thirty inches in circumference, or one-third of an inch annual growth in diameter.

It rarely grows to a large size. I measured a spruce in Becket, which had a circumference of five feet six inches near the ground, and diminished almost imperceptibly.

The valuable properties of the wood of double spruce, are strength, lightness, elasticity and durability. As combining these in a higher degree than any other wood applicable to the purpose, it is used for the smaller spars of ships, for all, indeed, except the masts and bowsprits, in preference to any other, except the white or single spruce, and in toughness it is superior to that. It is also sometimes used, in place of oak, or mingled with it, in the upper part of the hull, and is found to outlast the oak, and to possess the requisite tenacity. A builder in New Bedford informed me that a ship over thirty years old had had, during the whole time, a mizzen-mast of spruce, which, when taken out, exhibited no marks of decay. Knees, also, of great durability, are made of the lower part of the trunk and a principal root of the spruce. It is much used for making ladders, and extensively employed in building, being suitable for the smaller timbers in the frame, and for shingles. For these purposes, much spruce timber is brought to Boston from the lower part of Maine, particularly of the variety called red, and in pieces seventy or eighty feet long.

Great quantities of spruce beer are annually made from the recent shoots of the double spruce.*

This beer is said to be made by boiling the fresh branches of spruce until the bark is loosened, mixing with the decoction roasted oats or barley and toasted bread or biscuits, sweetening with brown sugar or molasses, and causing the liquor to ferment, by means of yeast.

Sp. 3. THE SINGLE OR WHITE SPRUCE. Abies alba. Michaux.

Figured in Lambert's Pinus; Plate 37.

Michaux; Sylva, III, Plate 148.

This is a more slender and tapering tree of the swamps, marked by the light color of the bark and lighter green of the leaves. It rarely rises to the height of forty or fifty feet. It is perfectly straight, with numerous, somewhat irregularly scattered branches, forming a head of the same shape as that of the double spruce, but less broad, and with foliage of a less gloomy color, whence its name. The bark is of a light brown, somewhat roughened by scales an inch broad and of somewhat greater length.

The shoots are slender, of a light brown or yellowish color, the bark seeming to be made up, as in the other species, of small roundish ridges formed of the footstalks of the leaves extending downwards and ending at a leaf below. The leaves are of a light bluish green, in spirals rather closely set, and equally on all sides of the shoot. On the horizontal branchlets, the short footstalks of the leaves on the under side are so bent as to bring all the leaves to the upper half of the branch. The leaves usually fall off in two or three years, leaving a scaly surface bristling with the short persistent footstalks. These gradually disappear and the loose scales enlarge with the growth of the branch.

The root is remarkable for its toughness, and from it the Canadian Indians make the threads with which they sew together the birch-bark for their canoes.

The cones, which are pale green when young, and afterwards pale brown, vary in size extremely. As they grow here, they are from three-quarters of an inch to one and one-half inches long, nearly cylindrical in shape, or somewhat tapering, with rounded ends. In Canada, they are often three inches long. The scales are close set and perfectly smooth and entire on their edge.

The single spruce is thought to possess the excellent properties of the other species in an equal degree, and is preferred,

when it can be had, for the lighter spars of vessels, on account of the smoothness and beauty with which it works. It is found farther north than any other tree of America, and in latitude 671° attains the height of twenty feet or more.*

This tree has considerable rapidity of growth. Seven trees in the Botanic Garden, 'Cambridge, which had been planted thirty-one or thirty-two years, measured, one, two feet ten inches; one, two feet nine inches; three, two feet five inches each; one, two feet four inches; and one, two feet three inches; giving, on an average, a diameter of ten inches in thirty-one years, or a growth of somewhat less than one-third of an inch annually.

I. 3. THE FIR. Picea. Link.

The firs are lofty trees, social inhabitants of the colder regions of both hemispheres, and often forming vast woods. They are remarkable for the regularity and symmetry of their pyramidal heads. The leaves are solitary, needle-shaped, rigid, sempervirent, supposed by botanists to be formed of two, grown together. They are distinguished from the other pines by the smoothness of their bark, in which are formed cavities or crypts containing their peculiar balsam, by the silvery whiteness of the under surface of the seemingly two-rowed leaves, and by their long erect cones, formed of woody, deciduous scales, with a smooth, thin edge.

Sp. 1. THE BALSAM FIR. Picea balsamifera. Michaux.

Figured in Lambert's Pinus; Plate 41.

Michaux; Sylva, III, Plate 150.

Loudon; Arboretum, VIII, Plate 334.

This beautiful evergreen resembles the spruce in its regular pyramidal form. It differs from it in its bark, which is smooth when young, and continues so until the tree has attained considerable age; in its leaves, which are nearly flat, and of a beautiful silvery color beneath, and in having large, upright cones.

*Hooker's Fl. Bor. Am. II, 163.

It has a strong resemblance to the silver fir of Europe, a much loftier and nobler tree. The American tree is known by the name of fir balsam, or balsam fir, or simply, fir.

The root of the balsam fir, like that of the other pines, penetrates to a small depth, in young trees, not more than a foot; and extends horizontally to the distance of five or six, rarely ten feet, covered with a bright red or crimson bark, which separates in thin scales. The trunk is perfectly even and straight, and tapers regularly and rapidly to the top. It is a thrifty grower, and the young shoots are stout and large, and covered with a green bark striate with gray. They are close set with leaves in regular spirals, which continue many years, becoming more and more remote by the growth of the stem, and, when they fall, leaving a large, oval, horizontal scar of great permanence. The bark becomes, from year to year, of a deeper green, and remains smooth, swollen at intervals with the vesicles produced by the crypts containing the balsam, and in the larger stocks, on its native mountains, blotched with membranaceous lichens.

The branches, which in young trees incline upward, and on older ones become nearly horizontal, with a slight upward sweep, are in whorls of about five, often with the regularity of the branches of a chandelier, with occasionally scattered solitary limbs between. The leaves are sessile, from one-fourth of an inch to an inch in length, smooth, narrow, pointed, green with faint white lines above, with a silvery blue tinge beneath, produced by many lines of minute, shining, resinous dots. Arranged in spirals, they spread equally on every side of the stem or branch, but when the latter is horizontal, they so bend upwards from the lower side as to seem to form but two rows, or to be crowded on the upper side.

The buds, round and small, are enveloped in resin; those on the ends of the principal and larger shoots, are surrounded by about five smaller ones. Those on the lateral shoots are single or two or three together; and solitary buds are scattered irregularly at various points.

The stamens are in oblong heads or aments, one-fourth of an inch long, rather densely crowded on the lower side, near the

extremity of the branches. Each ament is on a short footstalk, which rises from a cup-like, irregular scale, in the axil of a leaf.

The cones are erect, near the ends of the upper branches, from two to four inches long, and an inch or more thick, nearly cylindrical or a little tapering, with the ends rounded, and set on very short, stout footstalks. They are made up of broad, round, bluish, purple scales, outside each of which is a scale resembling a transformed, winged leaf, and within are two seeds with short, broad, purple wings. They stand in great numbers on the uppermost branches, and, by their soft purple color, produce a fine effect.

The balsam is gathered, in small quantities, by puncturing the tubercles in the bark and receiving it in a cup, or shell, or an iron spoon. The process is a slow one, and the turpentine, which, under the name of balsam of Gilead, or Canada balsam, is reputed to have great virtues in pulmonary complaints, is sold at a high price in this country and in England. A valuable varnish for water-colors is prepared from it.

The wood of the fir is of little value, as it is deficient in hardness, strength and elasticity, and the tree does not often attain a large size. It is hardy, easily transplanted, and grows rapidly and with great vigor, and possesses in a high degree the most important qualities of the evergreens as an ornamental tree, a regular pyramidal shape, and rich, deep-green foliage. The large cones with which the upper branches are often loaded, give it additional beauty. Its defects are its stiffness, and the raggedness which it assumes in old age, which comes on early; as it is a short-lived tree.

Its chief recommendations are its hardiness and quickness of growth. It stands unprotected against the wind, when not blowing from the sea, better than any other tree, and grows on a bleak point where any other would be killed. Of several firs in the Botanic Garden, which had been planted in 1809 or '10, the largest measured, in 1841, after it had been thirty-one years planted, four feet two inches, at the ground, and three feet five inches, at three feet. One, planted in 1814, measured three feet ten inches at the ground, two feet six inches at three feet; and one, planted in 1819 or '20, measured three feet one