CONIFERS. 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



93 



resin passages, and numerous obscure medullary rays. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood 

 is 0.4096, a cubic foot weighing 25.53 pounds. It is occasionally manufactured into lumber, and is 

 also used for railway ties and mine timbers, and as fuel. 



In Alaska a sort of coarse bread is made from the inner bark ; 1 and in eastern Oregon the cam- 

 bium layer of the variety Murray ana is sometimes eaten by Indians, who make baskets from sections 

 of the bark of this tree to hold berries. 2 



Pinus contorta was discovered on the mountains above the head of the Jefferson River by Lewis 

 and Clark in August, 1805, as they were crossing the Rocky Mountains ; 3 and on the second of 

 November they encountered what was probably the coast form near the mouth of the Columbia 

 River. 4 



Introduced into English gardens in 1831 by David Douglas, who first made it known to science, 

 the coast tree is occasionally cultivated in Europe, although it has little to recommend it as an orna- 

 mental plant. 5 The variety Murrayana, which in its name commemorates Andrew Murray, 6 was 

 found by John Jeffrey on the Siskiyou Mountains in northern California and by him was introduced 

 into Europe. This form has proved hardy in eastern Massachusetts, where it has been cultivated in 

 the Arnold Arboretum since 1875, and has produced cones, although, like the other Pines from the 

 Rocky Mountains, it suffers when transferred to the Atlantic seaboard from fungal diseases. 



1 When the sap rises at the end of June or early in July the 

 Alaska Indians fell the trees of this Pine and of the Hemlock 

 and strip off the bark in pieces ten or twelve feet long. The inner 

 bark is then brought into camp in canoes, picked by the women into 

 small pieces, mixed with water into a consistent mass, and moulded 

 in frames into cakes about eleven inches square. A hole is then 

 dug in the ground and sand or small stones placed on the bottom 

 and thoroughly heated. The fire is then removed and a layer of 

 the fresh leaves of the western Skunk Cabbage (Lysichiton Kam- 

 tschatcensis, Schott) is placed over them. A layer of cakes is placed 

 on these leaves, and this process is repeated until there are five or 

 six layers of cakes. On top of the whole, damp moss or seaweed is 

 piled, a fire is built, and the whole mass is cooked for about an 

 hour. The cakes are then removed and placed on Thuya slats in 

 a smoke-house, and smoked for four or five days, when they will 

 keep indefinitely. After cooking and smoking, the cakes are put 

 up in oblong bundles somewhat resembling a quintal of codfish, and 

 are covered by long strips of matting made of Thuya bark, and 

 securely tied by ropes of this bark for convenience of transport in 

 canoes. The bread is used by breaking the cake into pieces, pour- 

 ing hot or boiling water over them until they become soft, and then 

 placing them on the snow to cool, and covering them with ulikon 

 grease, when they are ready to eat. Sometimes the cake is broken 

 into pieces, and these are put into stone mortars and reduced to 

 powder, which is sprinkled over boiled smoked salmon or other 

 food. Children and young adults eat the bread with apparent 

 relish in its natural state ; but older people are unable to do this 

 because their teeth are worn down by long-continued use in eating 

 dried smoked salmon and other hard substances. 



This preparation from the bark of Pinus contorta is usually eaten 

 within a few days after it has been cooked, as, if it is kept for any 

 length of time, it develops a resinous flavor that is not palatable 

 even to an Alaskan Indian. The Hemlock-bark bread, however, 

 can be kept indefinitely, and is therefore usually put up for winter 

 use (M. W. Gorman in litt.). 



2 Coville, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. v. 89. 



3 The " mountains continue high on each side of the valley, but 

 their only covering is a small species of Pitch Pine with a short 

 leaf, growing on the lower and middle regions, while for some dis- 

 tance below the snow-tops there is neither timber nor herbage of 

 any kind." (History of the Expedition under Command of Lewis and 

 Clark, ed. Coues, ii. 457. — Sargent, Garden and Forest, x. 28.) 



4 History. of the Expedition under Command of Lewis and Clark, 

 I. c. 668. — Sargent, I. c. 29. 



5 Fowler, Gard. Chron. 1872, 1070. 



6 Andrew Murray (1812-1878) was born in Edinburgh, and, 

 being educated for the law, obtained the position of Writer to the 

 Signet, although his predilections were for natural history, in which 

 he became interested as a boy. While best known, perhaps, as an 

 entomologist, he wrote a number of papers on botany, especially on 

 the Conifers of Japan and of western North America. He was 

 chosen secretary of the association which sent Jeffrey to America, 

 and, with Professor Balfour, described many of the plants that he 

 discovered. In 1858 Mr. Murray was elected president of the 

 Botanical Society of Edinburgh, and two years later, having been 

 made assistant secretary of the Horticultural Society of London, he 

 established himself in that city, and devoted the remainder of his 

 life to the affairs of the society and to the publication of numer- 

 ous scientific papers and Lawson's Pinetum Britanicum, of which he 

 was one of the editors. His most important dendrological papers 

 are a circular addressed to the subscribers of the Oregon Associa- 

 tion, probably printed in 1853, and containing the first descriptions 

 and figures of several western American Conifers ; two papers on 

 California Conifers, published in 1855 and 1859 in the Edinburgh 

 New Philosophical Journal ; The Pines and Firs of Japan, first pub- 

 lished in 1862 in the Proceedings oj the Royal Horticultural Society, 

 and a paper on the Synonymy of Various Conifers, published a year 

 later in the Proceedings of that society. 



