The wood of the Spruce Fir is valuable for many purposes. The tall, smooth tree trunks are used for the masts of ships, for scaffolding poles, and telegraph posts; and many boat-loads of Fir planks are brought from Norway and from the shores of the Baltic Sea, to be manufactured into flooring boards for our houses. In some places the fibre of the Spruce Fir is reduced to pulp, and from this a common kind of paper is produced which is used for newspapers or cheap magazines. From the sap we get resin and turpentine, and the bark is used in the tanning of leather. Some people say that the name Fir wood is just a mistake for fire-wood, because in the old days torches were made of the young fir branches, whose gummy twigs burnt easily with a clear, strong light. PLATE XXII THE SILVER FIR Many people find it difficult to distinguish between the Spruce Fir and the Silver Fir, and they are often called by each other’s names; yet they are unlike in many points, and a little trouble would prevent such mistakes. The Silver Fir (1) is not one of our native trees; it was brought from Central or Southern Europe to this country in 1603, and has taken kindly to our moist climate. It does not grow on such lofty mountains as the Spruce, but it will thrive at a level of six thousand feet above the sea, higher than the highest mountain in Great Britain. It is a tall, stately tree, but it is bushier and less regular than the Spruce Fir. The trunk is covered with greyish brown bark, which is smooth when the tree is young; but as the tree grows old--and the Silver Fir will live for four hundred years--this bark cracks into many rugged fissures. You remember that the Spruce tree has a sharp spear-like point rising from the very top of the trunk. In the Silver Fir the tree is only pointed when very young, and by the time it is full grown the top is bushy, with many small unequal branches standing out from the main stem. [Illustration: PLATE XXII THE SILVER FIR 1. Silver Fir Tree 2. Leaf Spray 3. Stamen Flowers 4. Cone Flower 5. Ripe Cone 6. Seed Scale] These branches do not grow in whorls or circles, like the spokes of a wheel; they are often irregular, and there may be gaps in the tree where a branch has fallen off, and only a scar is left to show where the branch should have been. The Silver Fir is a firmly-rooted tree; it sends a long tap-shaped root, ending in two forks, deep into the soil, so that there is little danger of the wind uprooting it during the wintry gales. Now look at the leaves (2) which grow on the Silver Fir. Like those of the Spruce, and unlike those of the Pine, they grow singly, each little leaf standing by itself on the rough twig. Although they are placed all round this twig, these leaves have a tendency to grow to right or left of the twig, and look as if they had been parted down the centre and carefully combed to each side.