Apart from Mexico, this is by far the most complex province 

 on this continent and the most difficult to describe in a limited 

 space. It is not just that it is some 1600 miles in length and only 

 some 200 miles wide, an awkward shape in any case, but that 



it has such a wide range of latitude, while the major vegelational 

 belts that it covers run almost exactly from north to south 

 instead of from east to west, and are six in number. Further, 

 it supports two huge chains of mountain ranges with very 

 different composition, climate, and other features; and finally, 

 it lies between an extremely "moist" ocean and an extremely 

 dry desert. All the major belts, from icefields to hot deserts, 

 are also represented herein as montane zones. 



The boundaries of this province are fairly simple and 

 precise except in the north and northeast. To the north, we 

 notice the slight complication of the Olympics, an outlier of the 

 Northwest Pacific rain forests but south of the Strait of 

 San Juan de Fuca. Also, as we pointed out in Chapter 5, the 

 northern limit of the Cascades merges with the coastal, range- 

 forest type of vegetation but is primarily defined on phytogeo- 

 graphical principles. Nonetheless it is quite definite. 



Ignoring the mountains, this province lies in the Transition 

 and Deciduous Forest Belts in the northwest, then in the 

 Parklands, and finally in the Prairies down to about 35 degrees 

 north latitude. As almost all its lowlands are basins among 

 mountains, they are ringed by zones of Parkland with broad- 

 leafed, temperate Woodlands above these, and above those 

 again, the Transition and other Boreal zones. The true temperate 

 woodland belt just shaves the northwest. 



The two tremendous mountain ranges stretch through the 

 full length of this province in the form of a kind of bent ladder. 

 The outer or western is composed, from north to south, of the 

 North Coastal Ranges: the very ancient and curious Klamath- 

 Trinity Complex: the Redwood Forests of northern California; 

 the Santa Cruz Range; the San Bias: and the three blocks of 

 hills inland of these (I— III on map). The inner or eastern chain 

 is composed in the north of the mighty Cascades, and in the 

 south of the Sierra Nevada, with the volcanic peaks around 

 Mount Shasta in the center. Between these chains of ranges 

 lie Puget Sound, and the Willamette and Sacramento valleys. 

 All the ranges run substantially from north to south except the 

 Klamaths, which have a more nearly northwest-to-southeast 

 orientation. 



The southern end of this province is the north face of the 

 south Californian Block of mountains, the Santa Maria River 

 on the west, and the southern extremity of the Sierra Nevada 

 on the east. 



exceptions, all these small creatures inhabit the prairie and 

 parklands alike, though there are some that stay in either one 

 of those belts or the other. And there are other hosts that live 

 in the adjacent closed-canopy forests but come out onto the 

 grasslands either by day or by night to feed. 



MIMA MOUNDS 



The prairies of this province in many places display one of the 

 most remarkable features to be seen anywhere on this continent, 

 called "mima mounds" after a small grassland area of that 

 name just south of Puget Sound. These consist of acre upon acre 

 of land that is raised into regular oblong or circular mounds of 

 subdued contour, which are scattered over all the coastal prai- 

 ries and grasslands as far south as Mexico. Their appearance 



is very singular, especially on level ground and when seen from 

 the air or after a heavy rain. When these mounds were dug 

 through for railway or road cuttings, or merely out of curiosity, 

 it was found that they were really huge lenses, each lying in a 

 depression the proportions, area, and dimensions of which were 

 almost identical to those of the part raised above the base level 

 of the plain. Moreover, from the bottom of this depression long, 

 dark "fingers" extended downward and outward in all direc- 

 tions, meandering hither and yon. Usually these great lenses are 

 composed of a dark, silty earth with a capping of sod, and they 

 rest upon underlying, harder, more stony subsoils. Speculation 

 upon the origin of these mounds continued until 1947 — with not 

 a few contending that the most likely agency of their construc- 

 tion was human — when Dr. Victor B. Scheffer. then of the United 

 States Fish and Wildlife Service, undertook an investigation of 

 the phenomenon. His report is one of the most fascinating ex- 



