the tip. It is a lofty tree, growing to eighty or a hundred feet, sometimes more. It is a native of Central Europe, Northern and Western Asia, but has been grown in England for nearly three hundred years. Its timber is reputed to be durable under water; and from its bark is obtained a resin called Strasburg turpentine, also white pitch. The flowers appear in May, and the cones are ripe eighteen months later. The tree often begins to produce cones at about twenty years of age, but until about its fortieth year these are barren.
The name Abies is Latin, signifying a fir-tree or a plank. A shipwright or carpenter was abietarius.
The Norway Spruce-fir (Abies excelsa).
The Spruce-fir is a handsome tree, often reaching from one
hundred to one hundred and fifty feet in height. The leaves
are curiously square, sharp-pointed and scattered in their
arrangement on the branch. The cylindrical cones hang down
from the tip of a shoot, and are six or seven inches long, their
scales with a few teeth at the apex. Its seeds are very small.
The flowers appear in May, and the cones ripen in about
twelve months. It is a native of Norway, Russia, and Northern
Europe generally, and was introduced to Britain nearly three
hundred and fifty years ago; but previous to the glacial period
it appears to have been indigenous and prosperous here. Its
timber (white deal) is very largely used for many purposes.
Its resin is known as frankincense, from which is prepared
Burgundy pitch; and from the boiled leaf-buds and shoots is
obtained essence of spruce, which is used to flavour an
intoxicant known as spruce-beer.
One of the most ornamental of this group is the Hemlock Spruce (Abies canadensis) a species that was introduced about a hundred and sixty years since. Its home is in all the forest regions of Canada and the United States as far west as Oregon,
