ding year's branchlets, scales crimson.

=Fruit.=--Cones, on stout footstalks at ends of branchlets, pointing
downward, ripening the first year, light brown, about 3/4 of an inch
long, ovate-elliptical, pointed; scales rounded at the edge, entire or
obscurely toothed.

=Horticultural Value.=--Hardy throughout New England; grows almost
anywhere, but prefers a good, light, loamy or gravelly soil on moist
slopes; a very effective tree single or in groups, useful in shady
places, and a favorite hedge plant; not affected by rust or insect
enemies; in open ground retains its lower branches for many years. About
twenty horticultural forms, with variations in foliage, of columnar,
densely globular, or weeping habit, are offered for sale in nurseries.

[Illustration: PLATE IX.--Tsuga Canadensis.]

1. Branch with flower-buds.
2. Branch with sterile flowers.
3. Sterile flowers.
4. Spurred anther.
5. Branch with fertile flowers.
6. Ovuliferous scale with ovule, inner side.
7. Fruiting branch.
8. Cover-scales with seeds.
9. Leaf.
10. Cross-section of leaf.

=Abies balsamea, Mill.=

FIR BALSAM. BALSAM. FIR.

=Habitat and Range.=--Rich, damp, cool woods, deep swamps, mountain
slopes.

Labrador, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia, northwest to the Great
Bear Lake region.

Maine,--very generally distributed, ordinarily associated with white
pine, black spruce, red spruce, and a few deciduous trees, growing at an
altitude of 4500 feet upon Katahdin; New Hampshire,--common in upper
Coos county and in the White mountains, where it climbs up to the alpine
area; in the southern part of the state, in the extensive swamps
around the sources of the Contoocook and Miller's rivers, it is the
prevailing timber; Vermont,--common; not rare on mountain slopes and
even summits; Massachusetts,--not uncommon on mountain slopes in the
northwestern and central portions of the state, ranging above the red
spruces upon Graylock; a few trees here and there in damp woods or cold
swamps in the southern and eastern sections, where it has probably been
accidentally introduced; Rhode Island and Connecticut,--not reported.

South to Pennsylvania and along high mountains to Virginia; west to
Minnesota.

=Habit.=--A slender, handsome tree, the most symmetrical of the New
England spruces, with a height of 25-60 feet, and a diameter of 1-2 feet
at the ground, reduced to a shrub at high altitudes; branches in youn