

396 



He begs to express his warm appreciation of the kind interest 

 taken by the Agent-General and by the Minister of Lands in this 



matter* 



I am, 



Yours faithfully, 



(Signed) Arthur W. Hill, 



Assistant Director 



The Secretary, 



Agent-General for British Columbia, 



Salisbury House, 



Finsbury Circus, E.C. 



From this date onwards the matter was taken up • 

 enthusiastically. 



The forests of British Columbia were searched by skilled wood- 

 men until a tree was found that fulfilled the exacting ideals of 

 the searchers, but not, we are told, until eleven trees had been 

 felled that failed to satisfy their requirements. They found it 

 some thirty miles north of the Citv of Vancouver. Like its 

 predecessor that provided the old flagstaff at Xew, this tree also 

 was a Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga Douglani, Carriere), a conifer 

 first discovered in 1793 by Archibald Menzies, the surgeon and 

 botanist who accompanied Vancouver on his famous voyage of 

 survey, and first introduced to England by David Douglas in 1827. 

 It may b^ mentioned in passing that, growing at Scone in Perth- 

 shire, Douglas's birthplace, is a tree of his original introduction, 

 now a beautiful specimen over 100 ft. high. It was planted 

 where it now stands in 1834. 



After the tree was felled, its limbs lopped off and its length 

 reduced to about 220 ft. (as it stood in the forest it had been 

 probably between 280 ft. and 300 ft. high) it was conveyed by 

 rail and water to the City of Vancouver, and there shaped to its 

 preseut form by expert axemen. It is square at the base for 

 15 ft. up, then octagonal up to 157 ft., and thence to the summit 

 (214 ft.) it is round. It will be of interest to put on record its 

 diameters at various heights. Thev are as follows: — Base 



33 ins., 1G ft. up 33 ins., 52 ft. up 29f ins., 89 ft. up 25f ins.. 

 115 ft. up 22-i ins., 152 ft. up 19 ins., 190 ft, up 15 ins., 214 ft. 

 up (summit) 12 ins. 



The pith is not in the centre but 5| ins. from one side at the 

 butt end. From the pith to the other margin there are 360 annual 

 rings. The first 100 rings take up 17| ins., the second 100 rings- 

 7f ins., and the next 100 rings are compressed into 3| ins. 

 From these measurements Mr. J. S. Gamble infers " that the 

 tree was a dominant one for about one hundred years, putting 

 on diameter increment; then the surrounding crop caught it up 

 and passed it, so that it increased in length to compete with them 

 at the expense of its thickness. It clearly kept its place with 

 them to the end and must have been closely surrounded, but 

 having had the advantage of light when young was sturdier and 

 stronger, so was probably selected as the finest of the crop." 



