Spruit

“ It has already been shaped into a pertinent question, and “What is a sprat?” is ever and anon being asked by both the ignorant and the learned. Well, as in the case of the parr, and the two cases are very similar, there are people who believe a sprat to be just a sprat, and nothing more. But there are others, equally learned, who say that a sprat is a young herring. There has been some fighting over these two propositions—the sprat-and-nothing-but-a-sprat men assert that their fish is a totally distinct individual, and neither the son nor the daughter of old Clupea harengus. ”

“ Although we are compelled to class the Spruce among introduced species, it can lay claim to have been one of the older forest trees of Britain, for the upper beds of the Tertiary formations contain abundant evidence that the Spruce was a native here when those strata were laid down. Of its modern introduction there is no record, but from mention of it by Turner in his "Names of Herbes in Greke, Latin, Englishe, etc.," we know that it was at some date anterior to the publication of that work (1548) . ”

“ There are the twelve spruces, with short, sharp-pointed, four-cornered needles which grow singly all around the branches. They like cool places, and make their homes in great forests at the north or on mountains. The fir sisters and brothers have flat, blunt leaves growing on opposite sides of the branches, making them look like combs. The larches, who lose their needles in the fall; the cedars, the junipers, the arbor vitæ, the great California redwood—there are so many I can not name them all! They all belong to the cone bearing families. ”

“ It is used in cabinet work and interiors.
Spruce (Picea) , a genus of about eighteen species, native of the Northern Hemisphere. The White Spruce is a slender tree fifty to one hundred and fifty feet high, found from New York to British Columbia, north to Newfoundland, Hudson Bay and Alaska. The wood is light and soft and is largely used for construction and for paper pulp. The Black Spruce is twenty to thirty and very rarely one hundred feet high; grows from Newfoundland and Hudson Bay and Alberta south to North Carolina, Michigan and Minnesota. It is largely used for wood pulp and paper. ”

“ To Sprague—inclined to be trivial, even frivolous—there was the fascination of unplumbed depths in Nathaniel Stone; and to the American, Sprague was as a drink of sparkling water to a thirsty soul.
Together they accomplished the morning constitutional on the promenade deck, smoked the postprandial cigar of contentment and companionship at the ship's rail, explored the cinnamon gardens of Colombo and the Arab quarters at Port Said; and each day revealed to Sprague fresh traits in the other's extraordinary personality, for extraordinary it proved to be. ”

“ I recall Spruce Hopkins, radiant and handsome, amid a throng of new acquaintances—he gathered friends about him as frankly and quickly as roses attract bees—among whom not a few young women offered him their mute but eloquent admiration ”

“ You can pack two of 'em, and ride the third."
"Good enough," Ben agreed. "And after I once get in, I'd like to turn back two of them, and maybe all three—to save the hire and the bother of taking care of them. I suppose, after the fashion of cayuses, they'll leg it right home."
"Just a little faster than a dog. Horses don't much care to grub their food out of them spruce forests. They're good plugs, so of course I don't want to rent 'em to any one who'll abuse 'em, or take 'em on too hard trips. Where are you heading, if the question's fair?"
"Through Spruce Pass and down into the Yuga River." ”

“ The other two, which do never fall, nor do any of their branches flagg and hang down, shut not their leaves, but upon somewhat a hard stroke; the stalks seem to grow up from a root, and appear more herbaceous, they are round and smooth, without any prickle, the Sprouts from them have several pairs of sprigs, with much less leaves then the other on them, and have on each sprig generally seventeen pair. ”

“ European spruce is often locally known as white deal.
Spruce trees have single, sharp-pointed, short leaves, pointing everywhere, and keeled above and below so as to appear four-sided; the cones hang down. Spruce may be distinguished from the pines, firs, and hemlocks by the fact that pine leaves are longer and in clusters, that hemlock leaves are flat, blunt, and two-ranked, and that fir cones point upward. The genus picea has twelve species, five of which are North American. The resins of the black and red spruce are used as confections. [p149] ”

“ So saying, the active little fellow sprang from his hole, and if you had seen him, you would have thought that no animal without wings could have ventured upon such a leap without being dashed to pieces upon the ground. But Brush had nothing to fear; for though he had no wings, he knew that his beautiful bushy tail, and his legs, stretched out straight from his body, would bear him up in the air, and prevent his falling too heavily. ”

“ To an ordinary observer the trunk of the spruce tree seems like any other tree trunk—no rougher, and perhaps somewhat smoother than many; but Tom now found that on every tree almost there were little round excrescences, which, on being picked at with the knife, came off readily, and proved to be gum. Vast quantities of a substance which goes by the name of spruce gum are manufactured and sold; but the pure gum is a very different article, having a rich, balsamic odor, and a delicate yet delicious flavor ”

“ But Theseus answered: "The man who stretches his guests upon a bed and hews off their hands and feet, what shall be done to him, when right is done throughout the land?"
Then Procrustes' countenance changed, and his cheeks grew as green as a lizard, and he felt for his sword in haste ”

“ The leaves (2) are short and flat and hard, and they are rather prickly to touch. They do not grow in pairs or bundles, as in the Scotch Pine or the Larch; they are placed singly and very close together all round the twig. The twigs grow almost opposite each other on the young sprays, and each spray hangs straight down from the main branch, which looks as if a parting had been made along its centre and the sprays combed evenly to either side. From a distance the Spruce tree branches resemble drooping feathers which curve skyward at the tips. ”

“ Sprowle. As you are doubtless aware, she is stone deaf--at least, she passes for such, but I think it just possible that her affliction may not be quite so extreme as it is her policy to make people believe. But be that as it may, my intercourse with her is carried on through the medium of the finger alphabet, an accomplishment which I picked up while at school I had had little or nothing to do with Mrs. Sprowle before. She and her son had lived at the Keep in the office of caretakers previously to the arrival of Sir Everard and her ladyship. ”

“ Bige knew him and I had often heard about him. Sam spent most of the summer collecting spruce gum, which he was able to sell for a good price. This unfrequented part of the forest was one of his camping places during the "gumming season." The sticky juice of the spruce tree oozes out through cracks in the wood, and collects on the bark where it hangs in lumps from the size of a child's thumb up to the dimensions of a hen's egg. In the course of years of exposure to the air this pitchy material crystallizes, "ripens," and becomes spruce gum. ”

“ The extremities of the branches of the Spruce-fir bear small yellow cones, which however are nothing else [Pg 259] than the leaves deformed, being thicker and shorter than when in their proper state, and of a pale yellow, marked on their inside with two prominent orange-coloured lines. When arrived at maturity, they burst asunder, and discharge an orange-coloured powder, which stains the clothes of those who approach the tree. I conceive these excrescences to be caused by some minute insects. The common people eat them raw as a dainty, like berries. ”

“ Make use of him as you can, only don’t take his word for the gentleness of the horse you’re going to ride. He is an absolutely truthful man on any other subject, but he never misses a chance to play a bucking bronc’ against a tenderfoot.”
[Pg 141]
Sprague foregathered at once with the clean-cut, rather shabbily clothed young mine owner whose principal affectations were his worn khaki suit, a cowboy Stetson tilted carelessly to the back of his head, and a vocabulary of cow-camp slang which happened to be no measure of his knowledge of grammatical English. ”

“ The Norway Spruce is called by the French the Pitch Spruce, from its yielding the Burgundy Pitch of commerce. To obtain this, parts of the bark are removed in the spring, and the resin exudes in greater or smaller quantities, according to the state of the tree ”

“ Sprague’s prostrate form, he bent over and peered in the physician’s face. One look at the horribly distorted features and the glassy eyes that stared into his own told him that the man was dead.
Turning now from the dead to the living, Peret jumped to his feet and ran to help the pedestrian who, with the help of the terrified little druggist, was in the act of staggering to his feet. Although the druggist’s teeth were chattering with fear, his first thought seemed to be for the sufferer, and he helped Peret support the man, too weak to stand unaided, when he reeled back against the fence. ”

“ Sprott, with a respectful salutation, “there's a great kettle at my house—the Casino—which wants soldering: can you recommend me a Tinker?”
“Why, that's all in my line,” said Sprott, “and there ben't a Tinker in the country that I vould recommend like myself, thof I say it.”
“You jest, good sir,” said the Doctor, smiling pleasantly. “A man who can't mend a hole in his own donkey, can never demean himself by patching up my great kettle.” ”

“ For if a traveler is too long, Procrustes hews off his legs until he is of the right length; but if he is too short, as is the case with most guests, then he stretches his limbs and body with ropes until he is long enough. It is for this reason that men call him the Stretcher."
"Methinks that I have heard of this Stretcher before," said Theseus; and then he remembered that some one at Eleusis had warned him to beware of the wily robber, Procrustes, who lurked in the glens of the Parnes peaks and lured travelers into his den. ”

“ Sprats are very often confounded with young herrings, which they much resemble, but can always be distinguished by the following characters: they do not possess any teeth on the palate (vomer) , like herrings; their gill-covers are smooth, without the radiating striae which are found in the shad and the pilchard; the anal fin consists of from seventeen to twenty rays, and the lateral line of forty-seven or forty-eight scales. The ventral fins are slightly anterior to the origin of the dorsal fin; and the spine consists of from forty-seven to forty-nine vertebrae. ”

“ Why, it is only great spurge, such as grows in the woods at home.
No. It is Irish spurge which grows here, and sometimes in Devonshire, and then again in the west of Europe, down to the Pyrenees. Don’t touch it. Our wood spurge is poisonous enough, but this is worse still; if you get a drop of its milk on your lip or eye, you will be in agonies for half a day. That is the evil plant with which the poachers kill the salmon. ”

“ The cone may be considered as a very rudimentary flower, and the annulus may be regarded as a very early stage in the formation of a flower (perianth) . See page 235.
The SPORANGIA are situated on the underside of the sporophylls, one at each angle; they are sac-like, and open inwardly by a longitudinal cleft (Fig. 224 d) . An annulus is wanting; but in the wall of the sporangium, as in the pollen-sacs of the Flowering-plants, a layer of cells, with annular or spiral thickenings, is developed, which assists in the dehiscence of the sporangium.
The SPORES are green ”

“ 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. ”

“ White Spruce (Picea canadensis) is of more importance in Canada than in the United States, because more abundant. It is one of the most plentiful timber trees of Alaska, and it is found west to Bering strait and north of the arctic circle. It is said to approach within twenty miles of the Arctic ocean. Its eastern limit is in Labrador, its southern in the northern tier of states from Maine to Idaho. A little of this species is cut for lumber in northern New England and in upper Michigan, and westward, just south of the Canadian line. The light blue-green foliage gives the tree its name. ”

“ The furcula is U-shaped, and the crop is almost absent, but an after-shaft is present; the pointed tongue, the impervious nostrils, and the tracheo-bronchial syrinx calling for no special remark. Where the sexes {188}differ, the female is almost always the larger and brighter-plumaged bird, the colours being black, brown, buff, chestnut, and white in varying admixture, and becoming less distinct with age. ”

“ And the two men went up the dark stairway, Sprague remaining behind with the reporter.
"None so blind as those that won't see," said the latter, sententiously.
At the same time he placed his hand upon one of the shelves and gave it a lateral push. It responded slightly, and the entire shelving, with the door which it concealed, opened outward.
"I thought so," continued the reporter; "this looks as if it might lead somewhere. Will you come, Sprague?"
"How did you find the combination so quickly?" asked the artist, preparing to follow his friend. ”