HEMLOCK SPRUCE (Tsuga Pattoniana)

The Hemlock Spruce is the most singularly beautiful of all the California coniferae.

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

Those of the Hemlock Spruce are the most beautiful of all, forming little conelets of blue flowers, each on a slender stem.

Excepting the Sugar Pine, no tree on the mountains is so capable of individual expression, while in grace of form and movement it constantly reminds one of the Hemlock Spruce.

The smaller ones, such as those of the Hemlock, and the Douglas Spruce, and the Two-leaved Pine, he cuts off and eats on a branch of the tree, without allowing them to fall; beginning at the bottom of the cone and cutting away the scales to expose the seeds; not gnawing by guess, like a bear, but turning them round and round in regular order, in compliance with their spiral arrangement.

Once, while I was seated at the foot of a Hemlock Spruce in one of the most inaccessible of the San Joaquin yosemites engaged in sketching, a reckless fellow came up behind me, passed under my bended arm, and jumped on my paper.

The other alpine conifersthe Needle Pine, Mountain Pine, Two-leaved Pine, and Hemlock Spruceare never thinned out by this agent to any destructive extent, on account of their admirable toughness and the closeness of their growth.

The Hemlock Spruce, however, and the Mountain Pine, and some of the tallest thickets of the Two-leaved species bow in storms with considerable scope and gracefulness.

The Sugar Pine and Silver Firs gave place to the hardier Cedar and Hemlock Spruce.

"Git up an' fool 'em; or, gosh-all-hemlock!

But when the hemlock and fir trees began to crowd out the maples and oaks, Helma said quietly one day, "We are nearing the sea."

For, look you, Señor, if one may judge of men's characters by their faces or of their means by their habitations, we may dance our legs off ere ever these Moors will bestow a penny piece upon us, and as for their sour milk, I'd as lief drink hemlock, and liefer.

There are 300,000,000 of acres densely wooded with spruce, red and yellow cedar, Oregon pine, hemlock, fir, and other useful varieties of timber.

So did the inhabitants of the island of Choa, because their air was pure and good, and the people generally long lived, antevertebant fatum suum, priusquam manci forent, aut imbecillitas accederet, papavere vel cicuta, with poppy or hemlock they prevented death.

Motionless as a hemlock stem he stood there.

Yet there was little underbrush hereabouts; the trees stood somewhat apart, well spaced; and in the clearings grew silver birch and maple, spearlike and slender, against the immense stems of spruce and hemlock.

Unsaverie Woormewood, Hemlock, bitter gall, Brings no such bad, unrelisht, sower taste, Unto the tongue as this death-boding voice, Brings to the eares of poore Fallerio, Not for myselfe but for Allensoes sake, Whome I have murthered by my trechery.

You all know, surely, the Hemlock spruce of America; which, while growing by itself in open ground, is the most wilful and fantastic, as well as the most graceful, of all the firs; imitating the shape, not of its kindred, but of an enormous tuft of fern.

Stinking'st of the stinking kind, Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind, Africa, that brags her foyson, Breeds no such prodigious poison, Henbane, nightshade, both together, Hemlock, aconite Nay, rather, Plant divine, of rarest virtue; Blisters on the tongue would hurt you.

Sometimes a few slow-growing hemlock trees appear in the colder sections.

Even Caesar himself had to fall at last, his strong soul perhaps not sorry to escape through his dagger-wounds from so pitiably small a world; and the poison in the death-cup of Socrates was not so much the juice of the hemlock as the venom of the gossips of Athens.

White pine, hemlock, and spruce share this country with maples, black and white birches, and beech.

His palms encountered a carpet of hemlock twigs, which spread around a central fire to the circular wall, and was made sweetly odorous by the heat.

Hemlock is commonly a larger plant; and, exclusive of the generic distinctions, may be generally known by its spotted stalk.