PRESENT CONDITION OF FOREST AREAS. 4!) 



subdivisions, each of which shows special characteristics. The southernmost coast and keys of 

 Florida, although several degrees north of the geographical limit of the Tropics, present a truly 

 tropical forest, rich in the species of the West Indian flora, which here finds a most northern 

 extension. There is no good reason for calling this outpost seniitropical, as is done on Professor 

 Sargent's map in the work for the Tenth Census. With the mahogany, the mastic, the royal 

 palm, the mangrove, the sea grape and some sixty more West India species represented, it is 

 tropical in all but its geographical position. That the northern flora. joins the tropic forest here, 

 and thus brings together on tin's insignificant spot some hundred species, nearly one-quarter of all 

 the species found in the Atlantic forest, does not detract from its tropical character. 



On the other hand, we may speak with good reason of a subtropical forest north of this 

 region ; for here, where the live oak and water oak, the magnolias, the bay tree, and holly, and many 

 other broad leaved trees, mixed with the sabal and dwarf palmetto, retain their green foliage all 

 through winter, we are forcibly impressed with the semitropic character of this region, which, under 

 the influence of the Gulf stream, extends in a narrow belt of some 20 or 25 miles width along the 

 the coast as far north as North Carolina. 



While this evergreen broad-leaved forest is more or less confined to the rich hammocks and 

 moister situations, the poor sand soils of this as well as of the more northern region arc occupied 

 by pines; and as these, especially the long-leaf pine, are celebrated all over the world and give 

 the great mercantile significance to these forests, we may well speak of this region from an 

 economic point of view as the "great southern pine belt." North of the "winter-green," subtropic 

 forest stretches the vast deciduous-leaved forest of the Atlantic, nowhere equaled in the temperate 

 regions of the world in extent and perfection of form, and hardly in the number of species. This 

 designation applies to the entire area up to the northern forest belt, for again the region formerly 

 segregated on the census map as the northern pine belt is still in the main the dominion of the 

 deciduous-leaved forest, with the pines, and in some parts spruces, intermixed, or on certain soils, 

 especially on the gravelly drifts and drier sands, become gregarious, even to the exclusion of other 

 species, as on the pine barrens of northern Michigan and the pineries of Wisconsin and Minne- 

 sota, which are occupied by two or three species of pine exclusively (white pine, red pine, jack 

 pine). This deciduous-leaved forest may, however, be divided by a line running somewhere below 

 the fortieth degree of latitude, where, with the northern limits of the southern magnolias and other 

 species, we may locate in general the northern limit of the southern forest flora. Northward from 

 here, in what we may call the "Middle Atlantic forest," the deciduous species become less 

 numerous and coniferous growth becomes soon more so, until we arrive at the broad belt of the 

 northern forest, which, crossing from the Atlantic to the Pacific, composed of only 8 hardy species, 

 takes its stand against the frigid breath and icy hands of Boreas. 



Abounding in streams, lakes, and swampy areas, the low divides of this region are occupied by 

 an open stunted forest of black and white spruce, while the bottoms are held by balsam firs, larch 

 or tamarack, poplars, dwarf birches, and willows. The white spruce, paper or canoe birch, balsam, 

 poplar, and aspen find congenial conditions, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, over the whole 

 continent. 



On the Pacific side the subdivisions of the coniferous forest are rather ranked from west to 

 east. The Pacific interior forest on the Rocky Mountains is wrestling with the drougthy atmos- 

 phere of the plains and Interior Basin. 



Here on the driest parts, where the sage brush finds its home, the ponderous bull pine is the 

 foremost tree, and where even this hardy tree can not succeed in the Interior Basin an eastern 

 ally, the red cedar (now differentiated into different species), holds the fort in company with the 

 nut pine, small and stunted, covering with an open growth the mesas and lower mountain slopes. 

 On the higher and therefore moister and cooler elevations, and especially northern and north- 

 western exposures, and in the narrow canyons where evaporation is diminished and the soil is 

 fresher, the somber Douglas, Engelmaun, and blue spruces and the silver-foliaged white fir join 

 the pines or take their place. 



With few exceptions the same species, only of better development, are found in the second 



parallel which occupies the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada. Additional forces here strengthen 



the ranks; the great sugar pine, two noble firs, a mighty larch, hemlocks and cedars, arborvita-s, 



and the big sequoias. The third parallel, the forest of the Coast Eauge, the most wonderfully 



II. Doc. 181 4 



