124 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The luxuriance of all this western timber, its size, the freedom 

 wath which it seeds itself, and its rapidity of growth, render these 

 forests quite unlike anything to be seen east of the Coast 

 Mountains. It is the land, too, of flowering and berried shrubs, 

 Spirea, Berberris of several kinds (including our well-known 

 B. aquifolmm), Ribes. numerous Rubus, Gaultheria shalon, some- 

 times a tree 20 feet high — the Sal-lal of the Indians, — that most 

 striking of arbuti, the Madrofia tree, the lovely western dogwood 

 {Cor?ms mittallii), two beautiful elders, one red and one blue- 

 berried (Sambucus arborescetis and S. glauca), several Rhamnus, 

 and five great blaeberries or Vaccmtum, some red and some 

 blue-berried, but all, as a rule, 6 feet high. 



There is a range of mountains still almost entirely unexplored, 

 occupying the triangle of land which forms the portion of 

 the State of Washington that overlaps the south end of 

 Vancouver Island. A couple of days after reaching Tacoma, 

 we set out for these Olympic Mountains, crossing Puget Sound, 

 and driving for two days over nearly impossible roads through 

 as fine Douglas and Albertiana forest as I have ever seen. The 

 summer climate of those parts is quite delightful, never too warm, 

 with cloudless skies and only occasional showery days. Our first 

 resting-place was the little log hotel on Lake Cushman, surrounded 

 by Douglas fir and Thuja gigantea. Seven years ago I made 

 a small expedition after black bears across the mountains at 

 the head of this lake, and then found at snow-level whole 

 gardens of lovely flowers, Fritillaria, Brodiaa, Calochortus, 

 orchids, and, most charming of all, the beautiful Calypso borealis, 

 but that was in June. The river which feeds the lake, for a 

 couple of miles of its course, flows through alluvial land well 

 sheltered by the surrounding mountains from the winds of the 

 Pacific, and here we found a grove of extraordinarily tall Acer 

 macrophyllum, intermingled with Populus tricocarpa, Almis 

 Oregona, and Thuja gigantea. Their branches are thickly 

 clothed with dense growth of yellow moss and ferns : the height 

 of the trees I judged to be rather over 150 feet. The poplar 

 of this region commonly grows to nearly 200 feet, and is the 

 largest deciduous tree west of the Rockies — or, I believe, on 

 the continent — and this great maple is second to it. I here, too, 

 saw the largest Thuja giganfea I ever came across ; it measured 

 just 40 feet round, breast high, and was about 300 feet high. 

 I'his is, however, by no means the record. Throughout the valleys 



