AMERICAN FOREST TREES 195 



wainscoting. Door makers use a little of it as core material over which 

 to glue veneers. It is made into veneer, but of the cheaper sorts, such as 

 are suitable for crates and berry boxes. 



The Pacific coast is so abundantly supplied with excellent soft- 

 woods that only those of good quality have any chance in the local 

 markets. The fact that western hemlock has won and is holding an 

 important place in active competition with such woods as western red 

 cedar, yellow cedar, Sitka spruce, and Douglas fir, is proof that it is 

 valuable material. It is winning its way in the central part of the 

 United States also, but not as rapidly as it has won in the West. 



The bark of western hemlock is rated high as a tanning material. 

 The bark on young trees is thin, but as the trunks increase in size and age 

 the bark thickens. It is richer in tannin than the bark of eastern 

 hemlock, but is not so extensively used because the demand is less on the 

 Pacific coast. 



The future of the western hemlock is fairly well assured. Its 

 range is extensive and varied, and lumbermen will be a long time in 

 cutting the last of the present stand. Reproduction is satisfactory. 

 It will be important in future forestry, when people will grow much of 

 the timber they need; but this tree will stick pretty close to the range 

 where nature planted it. 



MOUNTAIN HEMLOCK (Tsuga mertensiana) is a near relative of 

 western hemlock, and occupies the same geographical ranges but higher 

 on the mountains. Near Sitka, Alaska, it occurs at sea level, but 

 southward it rises higher until on the Sierra Nevada mountains in 

 California it is 10,000 feet above sea level. It is one of the timber line 

 trees in many parts of its range, though it is nowhere above all others. 

 It is a difficult matter to state what its average size is. That depends 

 upon the particular region considered. At its best it is 100 feet high or 

 even more ; at its poorest it sprawls on the rocks like a shrub. Specimens 

 of fair size are from twenty-five to sixty feet high, and ten to twenty 

 inches in diameter. Cones vary in size fully as much as the trunks. 

 Some are one-half inch in length, others are three inches. The leaves 

 vary no less, some being a one-twelfth inch long, others one inch. The 

 leaves stand out on all sides of the twig, and fall during the third and 

 fourth years. They are bluish-green. The seeds fall in September and 

 October, and are provided with large wings. The wood is light in weight, 

 soft, and pale reddish-brown. The mountain hemlock is nearly always 

 spoken of as spruce by persons who are not botanists. The arrange- 

 ment of the leaves on the twigs gives the impression that it is a spruce, 

 and among the names by which it is known in its native region are 

 Williamson's spruce, weeping spruce, alpine spruce, hemlock spruce. 



