CHAPTER IV. 
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 YELLOW-BIRD—BARKING CROW—NORTH-WEST- 
ERN FISH CROW—HUDSON’S BAY MAGPIE—STELLER’S JAY— 
COUNTRY EAST OF THE CASCADES—THE OSOYOOS LAKES—NEW 
MUSK-RAT—FIBER OSOYOOSENSIS (LORD)—NEW SPONGILLA, 
SPONGILLA LORDII (BOWERBANK). 
FoiLow1ne 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-animalls; 
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. IL 
