Soil conditions for Spruce trees

It prefers a soil, which, though slightly moist, is less humid than that where the Black Spruce succeeds best; and it thrives well in the deep cool shades of mountain valleys. In the Highlands of the Hudson it grows in great luxuriance; and in one locality, the sides of a valley near Crow's nest, the surface is covered with the most superb growths of this tree, reaching up from the water's edge to the very summit of the hill, 1,400 feet high, like a rich and shadowy mantle, sprinkled here and there only with the lighter and more delicate foliage of deciduous trees.