62 



CHAPTER IY. 



NATURE OF COUNTRY FOLLOWING THE 49TH PARALLEL FROM THE 

 GULF OF GEORGIA TO THE SILMILKAMEEN GIANT TREES SU- 



MASS PRAIRIE AND LAKE NORTHERN SWIFT WHITE-BELLIED 



SWALLOW THE TELLOW-BIRD BARKING CROW NORTH-WEST- 

 ERN FISH CROW HUDSON'S BAT MAGPIE STELLER'S JAY 



COUNTRY EAST OF THE CASCADES THE OSOYOOS LAKES NEW 

 MUSK-RAT FIBER OSOYOOSENSIS (LORD) NEW SPONGILLA, 

 SPONGILLA LORDII (BOWERBANK). 



FOLLOWING the course of the 49th parallel from 

 the Gulf of Georgia, to our astronomical station 

 at Ashtnolow,* near the Silmilkameen Valley, is 

 an unbroken forest with a thick and tangled 

 growth of underbrush, in which there is little or 

 no grass, or food of any kind for pack-animals ; 

 a deficiency we were compelled to supply by 

 providing grain. Here and there so-called ' wet 

 prairies ' are met with, even at an altitude of 

 2,000 feet above the sea-level ; but these marshy 

 oases yield only the scantiest forage, being covered 



* Previously alluded to, Vol. I. 



