HEMLOCK SPRUCE AND CEDAR. 51 



and the crown constitutes about two-thirds of the total length of the 

 tree. In the valleys it -rows more rapidly and the boles form long, 

 straight, cylindrical columns. In such cases the crown may occupy less 

 than one-fourth of the total length of the tree and is made up of short, 

 straight branches. The sapwood is white and varies from the one-tenth 

 to the one-sixth of the diameter, according to age. The heartwood is 

 sometimes yellow and sometimes pink or reddish. The yellow variety 

 • is soft, easily worked, and much preferred; the red is very tough, con- 

 siderably harder, and less esteemed for general purposes. The wood 

 contains but little sap. and is therefore comparatively light. It is sawed 

 into lumber for all purposes, and owing to the small quantities of sap 

 will furnish a fair quality at an earlier age than the other conifers of 

 the region. It is much cat for railroad cross-ties, and, together with 

 the tamarack, furnishes fully 85 per cent of all this sort of timber drawn 

 from the Cumr d'Alenes. 



CEDAR. 

 Thuja pJicata Don. 



A beautiful and valuable tree occurring plentifully in many localities 

 throughout the Cceur d'Alenes. It is popularly designated as cedar, 

 but a more proper name is arbor vita?. It is not equally distributed, 

 but thrives best in low, swampy localities, at the outlet of streams, 

 around and on the former sites of beaver ponds, and in the neighbor- 

 hood of wet, springy places generally. At the same time it is not 

 entirely absent from the dry mountain slopes. The areas upon which it 

 is found most abundantly and of greatest size are the central portions 

 of the St. Joseph and St. Mary valleys and along the North Fork for a 

 distance of 80 or 00 kilometers (50 to 55 miles) above its junction with 

 the South Fork. There are also many localities of minor extent scat- 

 tered here and there throughout the inaccessible parts of the upper 

 tributaries of the streams, where it is found in small groves and occa- 

 sionally of large size. In the upper part of the valley of the South 

 Fork the tree formerly existed in large numbers and of gigantic size, 

 as is attested by the old stumps one sees everywhere in that locality, 

 but it is now nearly destroyed by forest fires and the ax. It is absent 

 from over the major portion of the western half of the North Fork 

 basin, an inexplicable circumstance when it is considered that the cli- 

 matic conditions and the elevations are not essentially different from 

 those that prevail over other areas where the species is plentiful. 



The tendency of the tree is to form groves of pure growth. The 

 interlacing branches, cutting oil' the sunlight from the ground beneath 

 them, produce a condition inimical to the growth of other kinds of coni- 

 fers. Owing to its habitat in places where the soil is continually satu- 

 rated with water and to the exceedingly firm hold the roots have on 

 the earth, it often stands a fair chance of escaping the forest fires and 

 of successfully resisting the tierce gusts of wind that sweep the canyons 



