to bottom. Though exquisitely
delicate and feminine in expression, it grows best where the snow lies
deepest, far up in the region of storms, at an elevation of from 9000 to
9500 feet, on frosty northern slopes; but it is capable of growing
considerably higher, say 10,500 feet. The tallest specimens, growing in
sheltered hollows somewhat beneath the heaviest wind-currents, are from
eighty to a hundred feet high, and from two to four feet in diameter.
The very largest specimen I ever found was nineteen feet seven inches in
circumference four feet from the ground, growing on the edge of Lake
Hollow, at an elevation of 9250 feet above the level of the sea. At the
age of twenty or thirty years it becomes fruitful, and hangs out its
beautiful purple cones at the ends of the slender sprays, where they
swing free in the breeze, and contrast delightfully with the cool green
foliage. They are translucent when young, and their beauty is delicious.
After they are fully ripe, they spread their shell-like scales and allow
the brown-winged seeds to fly in the mellow air, while the empty cones
remain to beautify the tree until the coming of a fresh crop.

[Illustration: STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH.]

The staminate cones of all the coniferae are beautiful, growing in
bright clusters, yellow, and rose, and crimson. Those of the Hemlock
Spruce are the most beautiful of all, forming little conelets of blue
flowers, each on a slender stem.

Under all conditions, sheltered or storm-beaten, well-fed or ill-fed,
this tree is singularly graceful in habit. Even at its highest limit
upon exposed ridge-tops, though compelled to crouch in dense thickets,
huddled close together, as if for mutual protection, it still manages to
throw out its sprays in irrepressible loveliness; while on well-ground
moraine soil it develops a perfectly tropical luxuriance of foliage and
fruit, and is the very loveliest tree in the forest; poised in thin
white sunshine, clad with branches from head to foot, yet not in the
faintest degree heavy or bunchy, it towers in unassuming majesty,
drooping as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of its race,
loving the ground while transparently conscious of heaven and joyously
receptive of its blessings, reaching out its branches like sensitive
tentacles, feeling the light and reveling in it. No other of our alpine
conifers so finely veils its strength. Its delicate branches yield to
the mountains' gentl