196 AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



Pattern's spruce, and alpine western spruce. There is little prospect that 

 this tree will ever become important as a source of lumber. It is no- 

 where very abundant, and what timber there is generally stands so 

 remote from mills that little of it will ever be taken out. Botanists and 

 mountain travelers who have made the acquaintance of the mountain 

 hemlock in the wildness of its natural surroundings have spoken and 

 written much in its praise. It has been called the loveliest cone-bearing 

 tree of the American forest. That praise, however, applies only when 

 the tree is at its best, with its broad, pyramidal crown, balanced and 

 proportioned with geometrical accuracy, outlined against a background 

 of rocks, peaks, snow, or sky. Its other form, prostrate and angular 

 where the tree occurs on cold, bleak mountains, has never inspired praise 

 from anybody, though its defiance of the elements and its persistence in 

 spite of adversity, cannot but challenge the admiration of all who like 

 a fair and square fighter. There are many intermediate forms. On 

 mountains facing the Pacific, and at altitudes of 6,000 or 7,000 feet, the 

 young hemlocks are buried under deep snow weeks or months at a time. 

 They are pressed down by the weight of tons, and it might be supposed 

 that not a whole branch would be left on them, and that the main stems 

 would be deformed the rest of their lives. But when the early summer 

 sun melts the snow, the young trees spring back to their former faultless 

 forms, without a twig missing or a twisted branch. 



