THE DOUGLAS FIR 99 



by the well-known flagstaff in Kew Gardens. The 

 wood now comes to market in clean, straight spars, 

 forty to 110 feet in length and nine to thirty-two 

 inches in diameter. These as a rule show no sign of 

 branches, and are singularly free from the knots that 

 mark the loss of them. The flagstaff or spar at Kew 

 was felled in British Columbia, and was presented 

 to Kew in 1861. It is. 159 feet long, the tree from 

 which it was made having been 180 feet high, and 

 having about 250 annual rings, averaging eleven rings 

 to each inch of its radius. It tapers from a dia- 

 meter of twenty-two inches to one of eight inches, 

 and weighs about three tons. British grown speci- 

 mens on the other hand, twenty-five years old, have 

 averaged only three rings per inch of radius. 



The Douglas Fir is the most widely distributed 

 of all American trees, extending over no less than 

 thirty-two degrees of latitude, from 55 Q N. near Lake 

 Tacla in British Columbia to the neighbourhood of 

 San Luis Potosi, in Mexico. It thus possesses a con- 

 stitution, as Professor Sargent says, that 



"enables it to endure the fierce gales and long winters of the north, 

 and the nearly perpetual sunshine of the Mexican Cordilleras, to 

 thrive in the rain and fog which sweep almost continuously along 

 the Pacific coast range, and on the arid mountain slopes of the 

 interior, where for months every year rain never falls." 



It reaches its greatest dimensions, however, in the 

 humid lowlands of southern British Columbia, Van- 

 couver Island, Western Washington, and Oregon, 

 especially round the shores of Puget Sound, and on 

 the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, where there is 

 an abundant rainfall from the Pacific. Here it attains 



