28o COVILLE 



not give the fish a bad taste as do some other kinds of fuel. The 

 pounded bark is sometimes used, applied directly to a cut or wound, 

 to assist its healing. Its name among the Tlinkit tribes, which extend 

 from Yakutat Bay nearly to the British Columbia line, is ' chahtl,' or, 

 more precisely, ' ch-ii'-tlh.' ^ The fact that the same name is applied 

 to other and probably to all the species of willow in that region indi- 

 cates how little the willows enter into the useful arts of the aborigines 

 there, for in those parts of the United States in which the willow is 

 employed in basket-making, the widely different textile qualities of 

 the various species have caused the Indians to give them discriminat- 

 ing names. Among the Aleuts of Kadiak the word for various other 

 species of willow 'nimuyok' (ni-mo-yiik'), is doubtless applied also 

 to the satin willow. 



SALIX ALAXENSIS (Anders.). Felt- leaf Willow. 



Salix speciosa Hook. & Arn. Bet. Beech. Voy. 130, 1832. Not Host. 



1828. 

 Salix speciosa alaxejisis Anders, in DC. Prodr. 16, pt. 2: 275. 1868. 



Type locality of the original speciosa, Kotzebue Sound, Alaska ; of 

 speciosa alaxensis^ "in Alaxa Americae occidentali-borealis." 



As Hooker and Arnott's name for this willow had been used earlier 

 for an old world species, the oldest available name, alaxensis^ is here 

 taken up. 



Salix alaxcnsis extends from the northern part of the Alexander 

 Archipelago westward along the Alaska coast to the peninsula, north- 

 ward along the eastern side of Bering Sea through Bering Strait 

 to Cape Lisbourne, and apparently more sparingly through the in- 

 terior of Alaska to the Mackenzie River in British America. East 

 of Kadiak Island it is associated with other species of tree willows, 

 but west and north of that point it is the only willow that presents the 

 form and dimensions of a tree. From the Shumagin Islands east- 

 ward full-grown specimens are ordinarily 20 to 30 feet in height 

 with a trunk four to six inches in diameter. Under suitable con- 

 ditions it doubtless reaches a still larger size. On the wind-swept 

 Aleutian Islands, like all other arboreal vegetation, it appears to 

 be wanting, but on the mainland to the nortli it appears again, on 

 Buckland River, at the eastern end of Kotzebue Sound, reaching a 

 height of 16 to 20 feet (according t(j Seemann in the ' Botany of the 

 HcrahV)^ farther north in the sound only ^ight feet, and at its northern 

 limit. Cape Lisbourne, l)eing reducctl to a shrub only two feet in 



' The diacritic marks used arc those of the Century Dictionary. 



