The Pine Family 



149 



and is now used for fence posts, telegraph and telephone poles 

 and, to some extent, for railway ties. The supply, however, 

 limits its use. It is particularly suitable for boat-building and 

 is largely used in the manufacture of canoes and light boats. 

 The sapwood easily splits into thin pliable strips, out of which 

 the Indians of the northern forests make the broad ribs for 

 their birch-bark canoes. Boxes made of this wood are said to 

 keep away moths. It is extensively used in ornamental plant- 

 ing, particularly for hedges. 



2. WESTERN CEDAR. Thuja plicata. Don. 



This is the big cedar of the western coast. It is one of the 

 big trees of the continent and rivals the Douglas fir in British 

 Columbia forests. Reaching a height of 

 more than two hundred feet, it is sometimes 

 as much as fifteen feet in diameter at the 

 base. It does not carry this thickness up- 

 ward for any great distance, however, much 

 of its base diameter being made up of im- 

 mense buttresses running up from the roots. 

 Above this rapidly diminishing base it fre- 

 quently has a diameter of five feet and 

 tapers gradually to a lofty height, though 

 sometimes it divides into several trunks. 

 The branches are weak and small for the 

 size of the tree, with a tendency to droop, 

 forming a rather compact cone. 



The foliage is the characteristic yellowish-green and the 

 leaves scalelike, closely resembling its eastern relative in that 

 respect. The bark is about half an inch thick, reddish-brown 

 in color and broken on the surface into broad ridges. 



As a timber tree the western cedar is equalled only by the 

 Douglas fir. The wood is light and soft, but rather brittle and 

 splits easily. It is dark reddish-brown, sometimes with pur- 



FIG. 21. Western 

 Cedar. 



