THE SPRUCE FIR.

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The common spruce (Pinus abies) is also abundant in theAlps ; sometimes mingled, but more frequently alternatingwith the larch, which generally ranges a little above it. Per-haps is it nowhere more beautiful than in the limestone zonewhich extends along the northern face of the Alps from Savoyto the Tyrol, where the vast sweeps of purple forests, brokenhere and there with exquisitely green Alps , and surmounted bygrand crags, offer some of the most beautiful combinations ofwild and pastoral scenery that can be conceived.

Travellers not unfrequently complain that the pinewoodscenery is monotonous, and perhaps on level ground the re-mark is just. I have, however, never yet found it so in themountain districts; the exquisite curving outlines of thewooded slopes, the beauty of which is enhanced by the factthat no one of them is a continuous line, but is composed ofan almost infinite number of slightly varying angles,—is theedge of a sylvan frill,—the delicate play of colour and toneproduced by each one of the myriad leafy spires being partly inlight and partly in strongly marked shadow, the change throughalmost every tint of dark green and purple as the sun passesacross the sky from its rising to its setting, together with theindescribable harmony between the trees themselves and thesurrounding scenery, have always seemed to me inexhaustiblesources of pleasure. Let me quote the testimony of one, whohas not only the power of appreciating mountain beauty, butalso the far rarer gift of expressing his feelings in the most ap-propriate words':

“ Other trees show their trunks and twisting boughs: butthe pine, growing in either luxuriant mass or in happy isolation,allows no branch to be seen. Summit behind summit rises inpyramidal ranges, or down to the very grass sweep the circletsof its boughs; so that there is nothing but green cone and greencarpet. Nor is it only softer, but in one sense more cheerful

1 Ruskin, Modern Painters, v. 84.

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