The North American Forest n 



character of the landscape. There is another feat- 

 ure of the western forests, or the larger portion 

 of them, which makes their aspect quite different 

 from eastern woodlands. That is the fact that the 

 trees, in many cases, stand far apart, so that their 

 crowns do not always touch. While in the east 

 the trees, both broad-leaved and evergreen, stand 

 so close together that the branches intermingle and 

 form a dense canopy, through which but few scat- 

 tered rays of sunshine ever reach the ground, such 

 is not the case in the forests of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains or the Sierra Nevada. One of the conse- 

 quences of this manner of growth is that the soil 

 in the western forests becomes much drier than it 

 ever does in the east. This fact will probably 

 have an important bearing upon silviculture when 

 that is begun in earnest in the western country. 

 Another feature distinguishing the forests of the 

 Rocky Mountain region from those of the Atlantic 

 side is that they nowhere cover such immense areas 

 in unbroken compactness. They are distributed 

 along the mountain ranges in belts, leaving bare 

 the highest portions where reigns the eternal snow, 

 and rarely occupying the broader valleys and plains. 

 Not only have the pines and other coniferous 

 trees the overwhelming majority of numbers in 

 those western forests ; they also display a far 

 greater variety of species, compared with eastern 

 woods. Some of the western species, like the 

 western white pine (Pinus flexilis) or the bull pine 

 (P. ponder osa), spread over large areas, while others, 



