CONIFERS. 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



75 



numerous prominent medullary rays. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.5182, a 

 cubic foot weighing 32.29 pounds. Stronger, more durable, and more easily worked than the wood 

 of the other American Hemlocks, it is now largely manufactured into lumber used principally in the 

 construction of buildings. The bark, which is used in large quantities, furnishes the most valuable 

 tanning material produced in the forests of British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon.* From the 

 inner bark the Indians of Alaska obtain one of their principal articles of vegetable food.^ 



The earliest mention of the western Hemlock was published in 1798 in the account of Vancouver's 



r 



voyage of discovery.^ In May, 1792, he had seen it near the shores of Puget Sound ; and in July of 

 the following year Mackenzie,* in the first journey made by a white man across the continent of North 

 America, noticed it near the Pacific coast in about latitude 52° north.^ The first description of this 

 tree, however, was not published until 1814 in the journal of the transcontinental expedition under 

 the command of Lewis and Clark, who passed the winter of 1805 near the mouth of the Columbia 

 River, where the Hemlock is still one of the commonest trees of the forest.*' 



The noblest of Hemlock-trees in girth and height of stem, Tsuga heterophylla^ surpasses all its 



1 Bastin & Trimble, Jour, Pliarm. Ixi. 354. 



2 See xi. 93. 



2 " Tlie parts of the vegetable kingdom applicable to useful 

 purposes appeared to grow very luxuriantly, and consisted of tbe 

 Canadian and Norwegian hemlock, silver pines, the Turamahac 

 and Canadian poplar, arbor-vitse, common yew, black and common 

 dwarf oak, American ash, common hazel, sycamore, sugar, moun- 

 tain, and Pennsylvanian maple, oriental arbutus, American alder, 

 and common willow ; these, with the Canadian elder, small fruited 

 crab, and Pennsylvanian cherry-trees, constituted the forests, which 

 may be considered rather as encumbered, than adorned, with 

 underwood." (Vancouver, A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pa- 

 cific Ocean and Round the World, i. 249.) 



* Alexander Mackenzie (1755 ?-March 12, 1820) is believed to 

 have been born in Inverness, Scotland. At an early age he en- 

 tered the employ of the Northwest Fur Company, and, coming to 

 America, was first stationed in 1779 at Toronto, and then at Fort 

 Chippewayau, at the head of Lake Athabasca, where he remained 

 for eight years. In January, 1789, he started with a small party 

 of Indians and half-breeds to explore the unknown country to the 

 north. Skirting Great Slave Lake, which was still covered with 

 ice, and floating down the river that has since borne his name, he 

 reached in six weeks the shores of the Arctic Sea, whence he re- 

 turned the same season to his post on Lake Athabasca. After a 

 year spent in England studying astronomy and surveying in pre- 

 paration for a more difficult journey, in which he hoped to cross 

 the continent, Mackenzie left I*ort Chippewayan on July 10, 1792, 

 and after great hardships and many dangers reached on June 22, 

 1793, the shores of the Pacific Ocean, in latitude 52° 25' north. 

 Fearing an attack of hostile Indians, he started homeward the 

 following day, and retraced his steps to the east. 



Having amassed a comfortable fortune in tbe fur trade, Mac- 

 kenzie returned to England in 1801, and published the account 

 of his travels. He was knighted in 1802, and remained during 

 the remainder of his life in the service of the Company in whose 

 employ he had gained fame as one of the most undaunted and 

 successful explorers who have trod the North American conti- 

 nent. 



^ " Here the timber was also very large ; but I could not learn 

 from our conductors why the most considerable hemlock trees were 

 stripped of their bark to the tops of them. I concluded, indeed, at 

 that time that the inhabitants tanned their leather with it. Here 

 were also the largest and loftiest elder and cedar trees that I had 



»> 



ever seen." (Mackenzie, Voyages from Montreal on the River Sf, 

 Lawrence and through the Continent of North America to the Frozen 

 and Pacific Oceans in the years 1789 and 1793, 317.) 



"The other wood was hemlock, white birch, two species of 

 spruce, firs, willows, etc." {Ihid, 363.) 



^ See History of the Expedition under Command of Lewis and 

 Clark, ed. Coues, iii. 830. 



^ An unfortunate confusion between the names of the two Hem- 

 locks of western North America bas long existed. Bongard, in his 

 Vegetation de VIsle de Sitka, first described three species of Pinus 

 collected by Mortens on Baranoff Island, near the town of Sitka. 

 This paper was read in May, 1831; before the Academy of St. 

 Petersburg, and was first published as a pamphlet in August, 1832, 

 the volume of the Memoirs of the St. Petersburg Academy, in 

 which it finally appeared, being dated 1833. One of these species, 

 Pinus Sitchensis, is the Picea Sitchensis of Carriere;' another, Pinus 

 Canadensis, mistaken for the Hemlock of eastern North America, is 

 clearly the western Hemlock; the third species, Pinus Mertensiana 

 n. sp. with/o?m '^ ohtusiuscula, supra plana, subius nervo medio pro- 

 minulo, integerrima,' ' and " strobili solitarii, sessiles, ohlongi, ohtusi, 

 H, poUicares pi min." cannot be referred to the same plant as Bon- 

 gard's Pinus Canadensis, although such a reference, first adopted 

 hj Gordon in 1858, after the introduction of the western Hem- 

 lock into English gardens, has been accepted by all subsequent 

 authors who have written on this tree. The fact, however, that 

 there are two species of Hemlock on BaranofE Island appears to 

 have escaped the attention of botanists from Morten's time until 

 the summer of 1897, when in company with Messrs. William M. 

 Canby and John Muir I found the Tsuga Pattoniana of Sendelauze, 

 Engelmann, etc., growing near the town of Sitka with the so-called 

 Tsuga Mertensiana, and it became at once clear that Bono-ard's 

 description of Pinus Mertensiana could belong only to the Patton 

 Spruce. Therefore this tree should be known as Tsuga Mertensiana 

 while another name must be found for Bongard's Pinus Canaden^ 

 sis. That of Eafinesque, published in 1832, Ahies heterophylla, is 

 the next oldest name. The possibility of identifying the tree de- 

 scribed by Rafinesque under this name has usually been doubted, 

 but his description was based on the following account in the 

 journal of Lewis and Clark : — 



«' The second is a much more common species, and constitutes 

 at least one half of the timber in this neighborhood. It seems to 

 resemble the spruce, rising from 160 to 180 feet, and being from 

 four to six in diameter, straight, round, and regularly tapering. 



