98 FAMILIAR TREES 



discovered in 1792, on the shores of Nootka Sound, 

 by Archibald Menzies, another Perthshire man, who 

 accompanied Vancouver in his voyage of circum- 

 navigation. From specimens brought home by 

 Menzies, without cones, Lambert in 1803 described 

 the tree as Pi'nus taxifo'lia, a name which Poiret, 

 recognising its affinities, altered in the following 

 year to A'bies taxifolia. David Don, in the 1828 

 edition of Lambert's work, while retaining the tree 

 under the genus Finns, renamed it in honour of its 

 introducer P. Douglasii ; and, retaining this specific 

 name, it was referred once more to the genus Abies 

 by Dr. Lindley in 1833, to Pice a by Link in 1841, to 

 his new genus Tsu'ga by Carriere in 1855, and to 

 Pseudotsu'ga, a genus constituted for it, by the 

 same botanist in 1867. Finally Mr. Kent has pro- 

 posed to set aside the name Pseudotsuga as a 

 barbarous mixture of Greek and Japanese in favour 

 of Abie'tia. 



Writing of the tree in its original home, Professor 

 Newberry says : 



" As it usually grows in its favourite habitat, about the mouth 

 of the Willamette, it forms forests of which the density can hardly 

 be appreciated without being seen. The trees stand relatively as 

 near each other, and the trunks are as tall and slender, as the canes 

 in a canebrake. In this case, the foliage is confined to the tuft 

 at the top of the tree, the trunk forming a cylindrical column as 

 straight as an arrow, and almost without branches for two hundred 

 feet. The amount of timber on an acre of this forest very much 

 exceeds that on a similar area in the tropics, or in any part of the 

 world I have visited." 



This description is borne out by timber of this 

 species now largely shipped from Puget Sound, and 



