108 ESSA YS. 



infer from Loudon's description, and the ill-favored figure 

 which he gives as an illustration of its general appearance in 

 English parks and pleasure-grounds ; 1 no less than from Gil- 

 pin's complaint of its "meagreness in foliage." 2 



Yet even the White Pine is overtopped by the Douglas 

 Spruce (Pimis Douglasi), which forms the principal part of 

 the gloomy forests of Oregon. The extraordinary height 

 which this species attains was first recorded by Lewis and 

 Clarke ; who state that the trunk is very commonly twenty- 

 seven, and often thirty-six feet, in circumference, at six feet 

 above the earth's surface ; and rises to the height of two 

 hundred and thirty feet — one hundred and twenty of that 

 height without a limb. One which was measured by a mem- 

 ber of their party is said to have been forty-two feet in girth, 

 at a height beyond the reach of an ordinary man, and was 

 estimated to reach the altitude of three hundred feet ! 3 This 

 account, so far as respects the general height of the tree, has 

 been amply confirmed by succeeding travelers, and especially 

 by that enterprising botanist, the late Mr. Douglas, whose 

 name the species bears, and to whom its discovery is generally 

 attributed. 4 Mr. Douglas was really the first to make known 

 the Lambert Pine (JPinus Lambert ianci) to the scientific 

 world ; a species which grows on the southern frontiers of 

 Oregon Territory and in northern California ; the height of 

 which is the more extraordinary, as the trees do not form a 

 thick forest, but are rather sparsely scattered over the plains. 



i " Arb. Brit.," iv. p. 2881 f., 2196. 



2 "Forest Scenery," i. p. 87. — The natural and economical history of 

 this important tree has already been fully recorded on the pages of this 

 Journal. Vol. xliv. p. 339, and vol. lviii. p. 300. 



3 "History of the Expedition of Lewis and Clarke," ii. p. 155. — More 

 surprising still, and, as to the height compared with the diameter of 

 the trunk, to us nearly incredible, is their account of a fallen tree of the 

 same species on Wappatoo Island, which, they state. " measured 318 feet 

 in length, although its diameter was only three feet ! " (Op. cit. ii. 

 p. 225.) 



4 We have not found Lewis and Clarke's account anywhere cited or 

 alluded to, except by the accurate (former) editor of the " American Al- 

 manac," in the volume for 1838, p. 108. 



