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This rugged species which is generally called the Scotch fir is not so smooth and handsome as our balsam-fir, but it is a tree which the people who live near the great Northern forests of Europe could not easily do without. It belongs to the great pine family and is often called a pine, but in the countries of Great Britain especially it is called the Scotch fir.

Each variety is distinct from the others: some woods are easy to split, such as spruce, chestnut, balsam-fir, etc.; some very strong, as locust, oak, hickory, sugar-maple, etc.; then there are the hard and soft woods mentioned in fire-making.

The spruce, red, black, and white, differs in many respects from the balsam-fir: the needles are sharp-pointed, not blunt, and instead of being flat like the balsam-fir, they are four-sided and cover the branchlet on all sides, causing it to appear rounded or bushy and not flat.

The salmon not having yet called them to the rivers, the greater part of the Chopunnish are now dispersed in villages through this plain, for the purpose of collecting quamash and cows, which here grow in great abundance, the soil being extremely fertile, in many places covered with long-leaved pine, larch, and balsam-fir, which contribute to render it less thirsty than the open, unsheltered plains."