2 20 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



planted throughout California near the towns, but their native 

 haunt is restricted to a few square miles just south of Monterey, 

 and, in the case of the pine, to some of the islands off the coast. 

 The gnarled and wind-swept cypresses must be of tremendous 

 age, and you will notice how entirely different their habit is to 

 those one sees in Europe, or indeed in California, away from 

 their natural habitat. 1 may say that I have seen these two 

 trees growing in Devonshire and Portugal finer than anywhere in 

 California. These are the only conifers I know which seem to 

 thrive better in the land of their introduction than in their own 

 home. (However, I saw some Norway spruce planted seven 

 years ago, in the public park at Tacoma, Washington, which 

 are over 25 feet high, and give promise some day of rivalling 

 the native Douglas fir.) 



I should have liked to have gone into the Coast Mountains, 

 immediately behind Monterey ,\.ose^e Abies brachyphylla or Venusta, 

 but had no time to do so. It is by far the rarest of American 

 silver firs. Further south along the Coast grows Pinus 

 Torreyana, and to the north in Marin County — Pinus inuricata, 

 the " Bishop pine." 



The only other conifers I need mention are the small nut 

 pines — Pinus qiiadrifolia and P. cembroides, which grow over the 

 tops of the mountains of Southern and Lower California. The 

 Douglas fir is common throughout the Sierra Nevada and 

 Coast Range, though strangely absent from the King's River 

 district. On the Coast Mountains of Southern California another 

 form of the tree is found, called by Professor Sargent Pseudotsiiga 

 inacrocarpa, never such an imposing tree as its kinsman the 

 common Douglas, but with bluish-grey foliage and much 

 larger cones. 



Of all the trees of the State there is none which provides such 

 magnificent timber as the Lawson cypress, which grows on the 

 Coast on both sides of the California and Oregon boundary, 

 over a comparatively small area. The wood of this tree would 

 be well worth importing by our English timber merchants, did 

 they realise its merits and its comparative cheapness. It is 

 known to the lumbermen as "Port Orford Cedar." 



Of all the nine Californian oaks, there is not one whose timber 

 is of any use except for fuel. 



