218 ESSAYS. 



are twenty-eight degrees, and the forest on the coast runs some 

 degrees north of this ; the length ma} 7 therefore make up for 

 the comparative narrowness of the Pacific forest region. How 

 can so meagre a forest make so imposing a show ? Surely 

 not by the greater number and size of its individuals, so far 

 as deciduous (or more correctly non-coniferous) trees are con- 

 cerned ; for on the whole they are inferior to their eastern 

 brethren in size if not in number of individuals. The rea- 

 son is, that a large proportion of the genera and species are 

 coniferous trees ; and these, being evergreen (except the 

 Larches), of aspiring port and eminently gregarious habit, 

 usually dominate where they occur. While the east has almost 

 three times as many genera and four times as many species of 

 non-coniferous trees as the west, it has slightly fewer genera 

 and almost one half fewer species of coniferous trees than the 

 west. That is, the Atlantic coniferous forest is represented 

 by eleven genera and twenty-five speci«^i the Pacific by 

 twelve genera and forty-four species. This relative prepon- 

 derance may also be expressed by the diagrams, in which the 

 smaller inclosed rectangles, drawn on the same scale, repre- 

 sent the coniferous portions of these forests. 



Indeed, the Pacific forest is made up of conifers, with non* 

 coniferous trees as occasional undergrowth or as scattere( 

 individuals, and conspicuous only in valleys or in the spars* 

 tree-growth of plains, on which the Oaks at most reproduc( 

 the features of the " Oak-openings " here and there bordering 

 the Mississippi prairie region. Perhaps the most striking 

 contrast between the west and the east, along the latitude 

 usually traversed, is that between the spiry evergreens whicl 

 the traveler leaves when he quits California, and the familial 

 woods of various-hued round-headed trees which give him th< 

 feeling of home when he reaches the Mississippi. The A1 

 lantic forest is particularly rich in these, and is not meagre inl 

 coniferous trees. All the glory of the Pacific forest is in itsi 

 coniferous trees ; its desperate poverty in other trees appears 

 in the annexed diagram. 



These diagrams could be made more instructive, and the 

 relative richness of the forests round the world in our latitude 



