The ubiquitous Canada Goose migrates north in spring and south in [all but nom lives all year m 

 almost every province. 



British in the last century and was applied by them first to the 

 desert scrub there, then to dry woodlands, then to wet wood- 

 lands, and finally to the Tropical Tall Deciduous Forest. It seems 

 first to have been Rudyard Kipling and then such writers as 

 Edgar Rice Burroughs who popularized the word in English, and 

 in doing so transferred it to the Equatorial Rain Forests. Nowa- 

 days people call any tall, dense, and tangled mass of vegetation 

 a jungle. It would seem better to confine the word to tropical 

 growth, and to apply the term "rain forest" — in the absence of 

 any valid local name — to these magnificent forests that rim the 

 northwest coast of North America. And they need a name, for 

 they are quite different from any other forests found elsewhere. 

 Also, it is indeed the warm rain and mist that drift in from the 

 Pacific that have created them. 



It may seem odd that the coast of this far northern province, 

 from 60 degrees to 48 degrees north, should be blanketed with 

 a sort of treble-layered forest, denser and more lush and dripping 

 than almost anything found in the equatorial zones; but this is 

 the fact because tropical forests are "hollow" and clear below. 

 One cannot describe adequately this forest, especially when the 

 skies are clear and brilliant sunlight filters down to its lower 

 levels. As in tropical jungles, the light is actually bright green. 



as photographers learn either immediately or to their cost later. 

 The floor of this forest is often hard to find, being many feet 

 below the apparent surface, and in virgin areas you have to be 

 extremely careful or you may break through the mat of mosses, 

 ferns, dead brandies, and general tangle and drop down into a 

 tridimensional latticework of fallen and rotting tree trunks 

 below. A companion of mine once so vanished instantly, right 

 before my eyes, and I had to fetch a rope to get him out. for he 

 was wedged between two great logs about ten feet down in a 

 sort of cave with overhanging sides formed by a crisscross of 

 age-old rotting logs. This rain forest that clothes the coastal strip 

 is built in three tiers, the uppermost being composed of the head 

 foliage of giant conifers, the middle of smaller conifers and 

 some broad-leafed trees, and the bottom one of bushes and ferns. 

 The middle and bottom strata are bound together and festooned 

 with mosses and lichens. 



THE LARGEST LIVING THING 



The principal coniferous trees are the Douglas Fir. the Sitka 

 Spruce, the Western Red Cedar, and the Western Hemlock. 



