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ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM.

PART III.

Properties and Uses. The wood of the spruce fir is light, elastic, and vary-ing in durability according to the soil on which it has grown. Its colour iseither a reddish or a yellowish white, and it is much less resinous than thewood of P. sylvestris . According to Hartig, it weighs 64 lb. 11 oz. per cubicfoot when green, 49 lb. 5 oz. when half-dry, and 35 lb. 2 oz. when quite dry;and it shrinks in bulk one seventieth part in drying. The value of the woodfor fuel is to that of the beech as 1079 is to 1540; and its charcoal is to thatof the beech as 1176 is to 1500. Both as fuel and charcoal, the spruce fir issuperior to the silver fir. As fuel, it is to the silver fir as 1211 to 1079;and as charcoal, as 1176 to 1127. The ashes furnish potash; and the trunkproduces an immense quantity of resin, from which Burgundy pitch is made.The resin is obtained by incisions made in the bark, when it oozes out betweenthat and the soft wood ; and the mode of procuring and manufacturing it willbe detailed hereafter. The bark may be used for tanning; and the buds andyoung shoots for making spruce beer, the details respecting which will be givenunder the head of A. nigra. The cones, boiled in whey, are considered good incases of scurvy. The principal use to which the wood is applied is, for scaffold-ing-poles, ladders, spars, oars, and masts to small vessels; for which purposes,the greater proportion of the importations of spruce fir timber from Norway are in the form of entire trunks, often with the bark on, from 30 ft. to 60 ft. inlength, and not more than 6 in. or 8 in. in diameter at the thickest end. Theplanks and deals are used for flooring rooms, and by musical instrument makersand carvers; they are also used by cabinet-makers for lining furniture, and forpacking-boxes, and many similar purposes. The wood, being fine-grained, takesa high polish, and does well for gilding on ; and it will take a black stain as wellas the wood of the pear tree. In carving, the grain is remarkably easy towork, taking the tool every way. No wood glues better; and hence its great usefor lining furniture, and making musical instruments. The young trees, espe-cially when the bark is kept on, are found to be more durable than young treesof any other species of pine or fir, with the single exception of the larch ; andfor this reason they are admirably adapted for fencing, for forming roofs toagricultural buildings, and for a variety of country purposes. The durabilityof young trees of the spruce fir was first pointed out by Pontey in hisProfitable Planter ; and the circumstance which led him to discover it was,the sound state in which he found the dead branches in spruce fir plantations,which, though probably some of them had been dead more than twenty years,he uniformly found not only undeeayed, but tough. This agrees with an ob-servation of Mitchell, that the lateral branches of both the silver fir and thespruce fir are so full of turpentine, as to be as red as brick, and 4 lb. perfoot heavier than oak. On further examination, Pontey discovered that youngtrees, which had been employed as beams in buildings, were perfectly sound atthe end of 24 years; the bark, which had been left on, being also perfectlysound. There are but few spruce fir trees in Britain old enough to producetimber of large dimensions; but some of the older trees cut down at Blair, onthe estate of the Duke of Athol, have been used as spars and topmasts, andfound equal in quality to those imported from Norway . The value of thebark for tanning is nearly equal to that of the birch and the larch, quite equalto that of the silver fir; and much stronger than that of the Scotch pine. InSweden , and also (according to Kasthofer) in Switzerland , the young shootsform a winter food for cattle and sheep. The inhabitants of Finmark mix thepoints of the shoots with the oats given to their horses; and the Laplanders eat an excrescence about the size of a strawberry, which they collect from theextremity of the branches, where it is produced by the puncture of insects.The floors of rooms in Norway and Sweden , we are informed by Mary Wol-stonecroft, and also by Samuel Laing , Esq., (the author of Journal of a Re-sidence in Norway during the Years 1834-35-36,) are, at least once a week,strewed over with the green tops of the fir or juniper; which, on a whitewell-scoured deal floor, have a lively and pretty effect, and prevent the mud onthe shoes from adhering to and soiling the wood, giving out at the same time,