2336

ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM.

PART IU,

for their colours ; and its oil sells it a higher price than any other. It is dis-tilled with water, in the same manner as the other kinds of turpentine, andthe residuum is a kind of colophony; a name applied to black resin, becausea natural hard resin, sometimes used in plasters, and said to be the product ofthe Ddmmara orientalis, which is mentioned by Dioscorides , was brought fromColophon, in Ionia. The proportions for making oil of turpentine from theStrasburg turpentine are, 5 lb. of liquid resinous juice to 4 pints of water,distilled in a copper alembic. This is the essential oil of turpentine; and,if 1 lb. of it be redistilled with 4 pints of water, it is called rectified or aitheriaioil of turpentine. Both preparations are used, in small doses, as diuretics,and in cases of rheumatism : they are also considered powerful styptics. Infarriery, the essential oil of turpentine is much used for strains and bruises,and is found very efficacious.

The Silver Fir in British Plantations. Though the silver fir has been plantedin some instances, in Britain , in masses, with a view to producing timber, yet itsprincipal use has been as an ornamental tree. Before the cedar of Lebanon be-came so common, or was known to be so hardy as it has been since found to be,the silver fir was planted near mansions, as a choice and a striking tree, which,as the cedar does now, might distinguish the residence of the large landedproprietor from those of his more humble neighbours. This it did, not onlyby raising its pyramidal head above all other trees, but by its striking regu-larity of form, fine dark green foliage, and candelabrum-like regular tiers ofbranches. This regularity of form was, of course, objected to by the admirers ofthe picturesque. Gilpin says : “ The silver fir has very little to boast in pointof picturesque beauty. It has all the regularity of the spruce, but without itsfloating foliage. There is a sort of harsh, stiff, unbending formality in thestem, the branches, and in the whole economy of the tree, which makes itdisagreeable. We rarely see it, even in its happiest state, assume a pictu-resque shape. Assisted it may be in its form, when broken and shattered,but it will rarely get rid of its formality. In old age, it stands the best chanceof attaining beauty. We sometimes see it, under that circumstance, a nobleshattered tree, finely adorned with ivy, and shooting out a few horizontalbranches, on which its meagre foliage and tufted moss appear to advantage.I may add that the silver fir is, perhaps, the hardiest of its tribe. It will out-face the south-west wind; it will bear, without shrinking, even the sea air:so that one advantage, at least, attends a plantation of silver firs; you mayhave it where you can have no other ; and a plantation of silver firs may bebetter than no plantation at all.” {For. Seen., i. p. 90.) “ As to the pictu-resque effect of this tree,” Sir Thomas Dick Lauder observes, “ we have seenmany of them throw out branches from near the very root, that twined andswept away from them in so bold a manner, as to give them, in a very greatdegree, that character which is most capable of engaging the interest of theartist.” {Laud. Gilp., i. p. 180.) The advantage of planting the silver fir, inpreference to the spruce, on stiff soils, Mr. Curtis of Glazenwood observes,is that the one advances to a large timber tree, while the other stops at 20 ftor 30 ft. high, and becomes rusty and stunted. There are, in Essex, in theneighbourhood of Glazenwood, silver firs of 100 ft. high, on soils in which thespruce would not have attained half that height.

Soil, Situation, Sec. The silver fir, like all the other .dbietinue, will attainslarge size on soils of a very opposite description; but a loam, rather rich anadeep than otherwise, appears to suit it best. It has attained its greatestheight, in soils of this description, at Studley and Castle Howard ; but it hasalso attained a very great height in sandy loam at Woburn Abbey , and on clay,incumbent on a retentive clayey subsoil, at Panmure. It is in vain, says Bout-cher, to plant silver firs in hot, dry, or rocky situations, where they c° n1 'monly not only lose their top shoots, but their under branches soon becomeragged; and, in place of that lively shining verdure peculiar to them in a suit-able soil, they become of a pale languid hue; nay, he adds, “ I. have kuoujjtrees of them about twenty years planted out in such soils, entirely destroyed