The author of Massachusetts Reports on Trees, &c., to whom I am much indebted for many of the preceding observations, remarks of the young Hemlock, "that in the beginning of summer each twig is terminated with a tuft of yellowish-green, recent leaves, surmounting the darker green of the former year; the effect, as an object of beauty, is equaled by very few flowering shrubs, and far surpasses that produced by any other tree." The bark is valuable in tanning leather, and makes excellent fuel. This tree grows in immense quantities in the northeast part of Maine, often occupying acres of ground, to the exclusion of nearly all other trees. Its wood is more valued for boards than formerly; its close grain and hardness fit it peculiarly for flooring. "It is much used in the large Atlantic cities as a substitute for stone in the pavement of streets, for which purpose it is sawn into hexagonal (six-sided) blocks of eight inches in thickness, and eight, ten, or eighteen inches in breadth." "The American _Larch_, known very generally in New England by the aboriginal name of Hackmatack, is sometimes known to attain an elevation of seventy feet, but does not usually exceed forty or fifty feet." It has crowded tufts of leaves, not unlike those of the Spruce or Pine, much shorter than those of the latter, and more slender and graceful than those of the former, and of lighter green, so disposed on the ends of the branches as to make the foliage of the tree the lightest of all the forest trees, especially when compared with the great strength of the tree itself. "Late in autumn they turn to a soft, leather-yellow color, and in the first days of November fall." "It has a straight, erect, rapidly-tapering trunk, clothed with a bluish-gray bark, rather rough, with small roundish scales." The branches are numerous, and most firmly attached to the stem, shooting out at apparently measured distances from each other, generally in a horizontal position, which makes its ascent quite as convenient as a ladder; and, as it grows mostly on open or meadow land, it is often climbed by timber-hunters, affording a good prospect of the forest on the opposite side of the meadow or intervales. The wood of the Hackmatack is distinguished by the following qualities: "Close-grained, compact, of reddish color, remarkable for its great weight, strength, and durability," the latter even being greater than the Oak. "On these accounts it is preferred before all other woods for knees, beams, and top timbers in ship-building." The Larch is extensively cultivated in Europe, particularly in Scotland. Though in America it is most generally found in low meadow land, where is depth of soil and plenty of moisture, it has nevertheless "the property of flourishing on surfaces almost without soil, thickly strewn with fragments of rocks, on the high, bleak sides and tops of hills, where vegetation scarcely exists."