with Larix occidentalis, on the damper and shadier slopes of the mountains, at 4000 to 6000 feet, giving place to Pinus ponderosa in drier and sunnier situations, and never attains, so far as I could see or learn, more than 140 to 150 feet in height.
In Washington and British Columbia it is not seen in the dry country east of the Cascade range, but appears as soon as the forest begins to thicken near the watershed ; and on the western slopes of the mountains, from about 6000 feet down- wards, is almost everywhere, except in swampy land, the dominant tree of the forest, attaining 200 to 300 feet in height from sea level to about 2000 feet.
It grows usually in mixture with Thuya plicata, Tsuga Albertiana, Picea sitchensis, and Abies grandis; sometimes with a smaller proportion of Pinus monticola, and in drier situations with Pinus ponderosa;* but in all the coast forests which I saw in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, including Vancouver Island, it out- numbers all the other conifers, except where forest fires have destroyed it, and its place is being to some extent taken by the hemlock, whose seeds seem able to germinate and grow in denser shade and in deeper humus than the young plants of the Douglas fir can endure. Wherever the soil becomes too dry and rocky for hemlock and Thuya, the Douglas fir is able to grow, climbing up to the dry ridges and sunny slopes until it meets the more alpine species of conifers. Its habit and size vary according to the soil and situation ; but I never observed any trees even in the most open situations, whose branches extended so far from the trunk as they do in English parks and gardens, and it does not attain anything like its full size unless it has a deep soil, a sheltered situation, and has been drawn up in youth by the struggle for existence, which prevails everywhere in the forest.
I saw a section of bark in the Washington State exhibit at the St. Louis Exhibition, taken from a tree cut at M‘Cormick in Lewis Co., Washington, in the spring of 1904; which was said by Mr. Baker, who was in charge of it, to have been 390 feet high. The same tree was recorded, however, in a Washington newspaper as having been 340 feet high and 42 feet in circumference (probably at three to four feet from the ground), and above 300 years old. The tree is said to have contained 79,218 feet board measure, equal to above 8000 cubic feet, quarter-girth measure. The discrepancy in the account of the height and that given me by Mr. Baker may arise, in part, from the tree in falling, having jumped some distance from its stump.
Another tree even more remarkable, though not so large, was cut by Mr. Angus M‘Dougall of Tacoma for the Chicago Exhibition in 1893. This grew in Snohomish Co., Washington, and measured on the stump only 4 feet in diameter. In falling it broke off at a height of 238 feet, where it measured 17½ inches in diameter, and was nearly free from branches to a height of 216 feet, which length was sent to Chicago.
The largest tree I have ever seen myself, which is said to be perhaps the largest known in Vancouver Island, grows by the roadside at Mr. P. Barkley’s farm at Westholme, about 4o miles north of Victoria and 4 miles south of Chemainus Station.
1 In the Bow river of Alberta it grows mixed with aspen (Populus tremuloides), and cottonwood (P. balsamifera).—Wilcox, The Rockies of Canada, p. 65.
