Fir
the common name of a large number of coniferous trees, of a pyramidal form and elegant proportions. This name is often used in a sense co- FIRE ALARM extensive with the widest sense of the word PINE (q. v.), and therefore so as to include a la large portion of the Pinaceæ (conifera), or at least the whole of the Linnæan genus Pinus. But the name fir is also often used in a more restricted signification, and the trees so designated are those forming the genus Abies of some authors, Abies and Picea of others, which the greater number of from Pinus. In the classification of botanists have now agreed in separating Lindley, all the firs are included in the genus Abies. The common silver fir, Abies picea, has erect cylindrical cones, 5-6 inches long, and two-rowed leaves, with two white lines upon the under side. It forms considerable woods upon the mountains of central Europe and of the N. of Asia, and attains a height of 150-180 feet, and an age of 300 years.
The wood is white, contains little resin, is very soft and light, and is employed for the ordinary purposes of coopers, turners, and joiners, and in ship and house carpentry, also for making bandboxes, and for many fine purposes, especially for the sounding-boards of musical instruments. It yields the beautiful clear turpentine known as Strassburg turpentine. Very similar to the silver fir, but generally of much smaller size, and indeed seldom much above 40 feet in height, is the Balm-of-Gilead fir (Abies balsamea), a native of the United States, from Virginia to Canada. The wood is of little value, but the tree yields the Canada balsam. (See TURPENTINE.) The other important species of firs will be seen under their particular names.
FIRDAUSI (fer-dou'sē), or FIRDUSI (-dö-sē), a Persian poet; lived from about 935 to about 1020. His true name was Abul Kasim Mansur. He is the greatest of Persian epic poets. In 1010, after 35 years of labor, was completed his first heroic epic, the "Shah-Namah" (King's Book), in about 80,000 distichs; it recounts the ancient Persian traditions of heroism. His other great poem, "Jussuf and Zulikha," a religious-romantic epos, is founded on the Biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife. He lived long at the court of Mahmud of Ghazni. equipment connected by wire with a