16 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



CONIFERS. 



five hundred and eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, is distributed from southern Alberta 

 and the interior of southern British Columbia ^ southward along the Cascade Mountains and through 

 northern Washington to Mt. Stewart, one of their eastern spurs at the head of a north fork of the 

 Yakima Eiver.^ In Alberta Larix Lyallii grows on steep mountain slopes and benches, usually on 

 those which face the north, either singly or in groves of a few hundred trees, and alone or mixed with 

 the Engelmann Spruce ; on the elevated plateau which extends from northern Washington into British 

 Columbia, about the State Creek Pass through the Cascade Mountains, it is spread at an elevation of 

 about six thousand feet above the sea over undulating grass-covered table-lands with Pinus albicaiilisy 

 Abies lasiocarpay and Tsiiga Mertensiana, and on Mt. Stewart it forms a straggling hue of scattered 

 trees at the upper limits of tree-growth, or, occasionally clinging to steep slopes facing the north, it 



q ■ 



forms small irregular groves at elevations of from five thousand five hundred to eight thousand feet 

 above the sea.^ 



The wood of Larix Lyallii is heavy, hard, close-grained, and bright reddish brown, with thin 

 nearly white sapwood. It contains broad dark resinous bands of small summer cells, few obscure resin 

 passages, and many thin medullary rays. 

 cubic foot weighing 44.10 pounds.^ 



The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0,7077, a 



Larix Lyallii was discovered on the Cascade Mountains in 1860 by David Lyall,^ the surgeon 



ommission 



west of the Kocky Mountains. It has not yet been cultivated. 



^ Macoun, Cat, Can. PL 476. 



2 In 1883 Larix Lyallii was found on Mt- Stewart by Mr. T. Si 

 Brandegee, who reported that it sometimes formed there trunks 

 four feet in diameter. This is much larger than any of the trees I 

 have seen in Alberta, where, although they are often sixty feet in 

 height, the trunks rarely exceed twenty inches in diameter. 



® The range of Larix Lyallii is still very imperfectly known. It 

 is reported by Mr. John Macoun on a mountain six miles southwest 

 of Morley, Alberta, at the unusually low altitude of four thou- 

 sand five hundred feet above the sea-level. This is on the eastern 

 slope of the Kocky Mountains, and the most easterly point where 

 this tree has been seen. It is very abundant on the mountains 

 near Laggan on the Canadian Pacific Railroad, not far from the 

 continental divide, where it grows up to elevations of almost seven 

 thousand feet above the sea; this is the most northerly point at 

 which it has been reported. It is, however, so abundant here and 

 of such large size that it probably ranges much farther northward 

 along the Rocky Mountains, which are entirely unknown botani- 

 cally from the line of the Canadian Pacific Railroad to the Atha- 

 basca Pass, eighty miles to the northward. It might be expected 

 to range along both slopes of the Rocky Mountains south to 

 northern Montana, but, although this region has been visited by 

 botanists, there is no record that it does occur there. 



* Sargent, Garden and Forest^ iii, 356. 



Larix Lyallii grows very slowly. The trunk in the Jesup Col- 

 lection of North American "Woods in the American Museum of 

 Natural History, New York, cut by Mr. T. S. Brandegee on Mt. 

 Stewart, is sixteen and one half inches in diameter inside the bark 

 and five hundred and sixty-two years old. The sapwood is three 

 eighths of an inch in thickness, with thirty-two layers of annual 

 growth. 



s David LyaU (June 1, 1817 -March 2, 1895) was born at 

 Auchinblae, in Kincardineshire, and received a medical education 



at Aberdeen, where he took his degree, having been previously 



admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh. After 

 graduating he made a voyage to Greenland as surgeon to a whaling 

 ship, and, on his return, entering the Royal Navy in 1839, he was 

 appointed assistant surgeon of H. M. S. Terror for service under 

 Sir James Ross, in his scientific expedition to the antarctic regions. 

 During this voyage, from which Dr. LyaU did not return until 

 1842, he devoted much attention to botany, making several impor- 

 tant collections, and discovering in Kerguelen's Land the plant 

 which was named for him by his brother officer, the younger 

 Hooker, Lyallia. After returning from the antarctic expedition. 

 Dr. Lyall served in the Mediterranean, and then as surgeon and 

 naturalist on the Acheron, which was detailed to survey the coast 

 of New Zealand. At this time he discovered the great white- 

 flowered Ranunculus Lyallii^ the largest of all the Buttercups. In 

 1852 he was appointed surgeon and naturalist to one of the vessels 

 in the squadron sent under command of Sir E. Belcher in search 

 of Sir John Franklin ; and his collections of plants made in the 

 American polar islands at this time added much to the knowledge 

 of the distribution of the arctic flora. In 1858 Dr. Lyall served as 

 surgeon and naturalist to the Boundary Commission under Sir John 

 Hawkins, accompanying it in its survey of the boundary line be- 

 tween British Columbia and the United States from the Gulf of 

 Georgia to the summit of the Rocky Mountains. An account of 

 his botanical collection made on the boundary, with descriptions of 

 the various zones of vegetation, was published in the seventh 

 volume of the Journal of the Linncean Society. After his return 

 from North America he was on home duty until 1873, when he 

 was retired. In addition to his paper on the botany of northwest- 

 ern America, Dr. LyaU published, in the twentieth volume of the 



r 



Proceedings of the Zoological Society, a paper on the habits of 

 Strigops hahroptiluSf a New Zealand bird. (See Hooker f. Jour. 

 Bot. xxxiii. 209.) 



