THE FOEESTS OP CANADA. 7 



eighteen inches, is a remarkable object when seen in company with the brown barked 

 gloomy looking spruce. 



The aspen in it northwestern home keeps ont of the Hodd plahi of the river valleys 

 and never appears on islands or indeed on alluvium at any time. On the other hand, balsam 

 poplar makes its home there and is seldom found anywhere else. On the Saskatchewan and 

 all its branches this tree grows to a large size, but these are but pigmies compared with 

 those on the Peace, Athabasca, Liard, Slave and Mackenzie rivers. On the islands in these 

 rivers it grows to an immense size and it is no uncommon thing to see a tree over six feet 

 in diameter without bark stranded on a bar. It is this species and the white spruce that 

 are found as drift wood on the shores of the Arctic Sea, as they constitute the trees of 

 the islands and flood plains of the Mackenzie and its tributaries, which are constantly 

 changing and being reformed by the spring freshets. All the islands and points are con- 

 stantly changing except when there is a jam of logs at their upper end. In many cases a 

 few hundred yards walk will take a person from trees four feet in diameter to the lower 

 end of an island where the young seedlings are just emerging from the mud. If the island 

 or point be quite large spruce will take possession of the upper end before the wasting takes 

 place, the old poplars will be smothered and rot, and the spruce will live on tlieir remains. 

 Spruce are never found on a new island. 



The Canada balsam {Abies halsaniea) and the paper birch (Betula papyri/era) are not 

 very common and ma}' be passed over with a few words. The lurch is the more plentiful 

 tree and has a wide range but is never a striking object or very plentiful. Besides using 

 its liark for canoes, the Indians in the English River and Chipweyan districts make, in 

 spring, a ver}^ nice syrup from its juice, which before the advent of "canned goods" served 

 in place of the dried and canned fruits now carried by travellers. 



In another place I speak more in detail of the forests of British Columbia and the 

 Rocky Mountains, but a few words may be necessary here to carry the sub-arctic forests to 

 the Pacific coast. The only known change that takes place in the forest after reaching the 

 mountains north of lat. 53 ' is the substitution of Pinus Murrayana for Pinus Banksiana 

 and Abies subalpina for Abies balsamea, which was left far to the east. It may then be 

 said that from lat. 53^ west to the Coast Range and the tundra of Alaska, with the 

 exceptions above stated, the same forest extends from Labrador to within a few miles of the 

 Pacific coast. 



Crossing the summit of the Coast Range and descending towards the west, we meet with 

 a difterent forest composed chiefly of Picea Sitchensis, Abies amabilis, Thuya excelsa and Tsuga 

 Mertensiana, and towards the south Pseudotsuga Douglasii, Thuya gig antea and Alnus rubra. 

 The moist winds from the Pacific with the mildness of the winters combine to produce on 

 this coast a most exuberant growth of every species, so that the forest is filled with a rank 

 vegetation and the stately trees stand rank behind rank in serried phalanx forming a forest 

 growth that is unecpialled in America, and extending from southern Alaska to California. 



The Forests of Prince Edward Island. 



The original forests of Prince Edward Island difier in no particular from those of Nova 

 Scotia and iSTew Brunswick as regards species except that their distrilnition is difterent. 

 The species enumerated below are the only trees indigenous to the island. 



