December io, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



603 



annually something like 400,000,000 feet of pine and 110,000,000 

 feet of spruce, besides 37,000,000 feet of red and white pine 

 timber, 600,000 feet of hard wood, 4,500,000 railway ties, 

 besides vast quantities of cedar, tamarack and 5,000,000 feet of 

 fire-wood ; the whole producing a revenue to the province of a 

 million dollars. The total annual forest-product for all Canada 

 amounts to $25,000,000, and this will double certainly as wood 

 becomes rarer in the United States. In a few years from now 

 the province of Quebec will obtain from her forests a revenue 

 sufficient nearly to meet all her expenses, provided an intelli- 

 gent forest-administration can be established. We still have 

 in our forests and in our waste land hundreds of millions of 

 dollars with which can be assured the greatest prosperity of 

 the province, but it is necessary that the men who govern us 

 should realize the urgent necessity of administering wisely this 

 magnificent inheritance upon which depends the future 

 prosperity of the nation. And especially is it necessary that they 

 consider the rights of the coming generation and determine to 

 protect this inheritance against the attacks of the short-sighted 

 and thoughtless. 



Recent Publications. 



North American Fauna. No. j. Results of a Biological 

 Survey of the San Francisco Mountain Region and Desert of 

 the Little Colorado, Arizona. By C. Hart Merriam, M.D., 

 United States Department of Agriculture, Division of Orni- 

 thology and Mammalogy. Washington, 1890. 



This' is the outcome of a careful biological study of the San 

 Francisco-mountain region of Arizona, and although Dr. Mer- 

 riam's studies are principally devoted to vertebrate animals, 

 his paper contains much which is of direct interest to botan- 

 ists, but interesting as it is, the results, as has been well 

 pointed out in the Botanical Gazette, are specially " valuable 

 in that they mark out a line of botanical work which the 

 Government should at once enter upon and push to its com- 

 pletion." 



Dr. Merriam deals with the general subject of geographical 

 distribution, and the conclusions which he reaches are, that 

 there are two life areas in North America, a boreal and a sub- 

 tropical, both extending across the continent with long inter- 

 penetrating arms. He abandons therefore the three life areas 

 generally accepted by naturalists — namely, an eastern, a cen- 

 tral and western — establishing, however, in the particular 

 region discussed seven lesser life zones, four of northern and 

 three of southern or mixed origin. The correlation of the 

 northern zones with corresponding zones in the north and 

 east are pointed out. 



Dr. Merriam first treats of the Alpine zone, which embraces 

 the bleak and storm-beaten summit of San Francisco Moun- 

 tain, which rises to an elevation of 11,500 feet. Nine of the 

 species of plants growing here were collected by Greeley 

 on the shores of Lady Franklin Bay, and many of them are 

 found scattered over the mountain ranges in all the northern 

 parts of the continent. It appears "that many of the plants 

 found on the high rocky summits of San Francisco Mountain 

 occur on the higher peaks of the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra 

 Nevada and Cascade range, and the Appalachian chain. They 

 occur along the arctic coasts of Alaska, Hudson Strait, north 

 Labrador, Greenland, north Siberia and Spitzbergen ; they 

 occur in the Alps of Europe, in the Altai and Ural Mountains, 

 the Pyrenees, and some of them even in the Himalayas. In 

 brief, they inhabit the arctic regions of the globe and extend 

 far south on the summits of the higher mountain ranges. 

 Plants and animals having such a distribution are termed 

 Arctic-Alpine Circumpolar species." 



"Just ,belovv the barren arctic summit of the mountain is a 

 narrow belt which may be named the Timber-line zone. Here 

 the trees which reach timber-line (in this case Picea Engel- 

 manni and Pinus aristata) lose the upright or arborescent 

 habit and exist as stunted and prostrate trunks, whose gnarled 

 and weather-beaten forms bear testimony to the severity of 

 their struggle with the elements. In this narrow belt a num- 

 ber of hardy little plants attain their maximum development, 

 decreasing rapidly in abundance both above and below. 

 Many of them are circumpolar species found throughout the 

 northern regions of America, and some of them throughout 

 the northern regions of the world, coming south on high 

 mountains, and occurring in greatest perfection just at or near 

 the edge of the northern limit of trees, and at timber-line on 

 mountains further south. Such plants are known to botanists 

 as 'sub-Alpine' species, and it would be well if the term 

 sub-Alpine were restricted to the characteristic species of this 

 zone." 



" Passing down into the next zone, the Spruce-zone, a num- 



ber of plants, birds and mammals are encountered which are 

 characteristic of humid northern regions, but regions not 

 quite so cold as those inhabited by the species which occur 

 on the snowy summit and at timber-line. The characteristic 

 trees of this zone are En.^elmann's Spruce {Picea Engelmanni) 

 and the Fox-tail Pine (Pinus aristata). The fact of present 

 interest is that many of the plants here enumerated as grow- 

 ing in the Spruce-zone of this mountain are equally character- 

 istic of the upper Spruce-belt of the higher Alleghanies, the 

 Rocky Mountains, the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada, and 

 occur also in the great northern Spruce-forest of Canada. It 

 is well known that the northernmost part of our continent con- 

 sists of bare rock and frozen tundras. There are no trees 

 along the sea edge of Labrador or Hudson Strait, or along the 

 coast region of arctic America from Boothia Felix to Alaska, 

 but just south of this region a large forest begins which has 

 been called the Great Pine Forest. There is not a Pine-tree in 

 it, but it is called Pine because conifers in general are called 

 Pines by people who are not botanists. The tree that grows 

 there is a species of Spruce congeneric with the Spruce which 

 occurs high up on San Francisco Mountain, and many of the 

 humbler plants are either identical or closely related repre- 

 sentative forms." 



" The distinctive tree," of what Dr. Merriam calls the Cana- 

 dian or Balsam Fir-zone, " is the Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga taxi- 

 folia), which ranges northward to British Columbia. Another 

 tree of nearly coincident vertical distribution on the mountain 

 is the lofty Rocky Mountain Pine (Pinus flexilis macrocarpa), 

 which extends north to the Kootenai region and Calgary, in 

 Canada. Wherever the Douglas Fir has been burned off its 

 place is taken by the Aspen (Populus tremuloides), a species of 

 wide distribution in the north, where it ranges from New Eng- 

 land to Newfoundland and Labrador, and thence westward to 

 Alaska, reaching its highest perfection along the southern part 

 of the great coniferous forest of northern Canada, and coming 

 south in the mountains." In this belt Dr. Merriam found such 

 plants as Geum triflorum, Potentilla fruticosa, Actaa spicata 

 and Viola Canadensis, all of wide distribution in our north- 

 eastern flora, as well as a Ceanothus representing a western- 

 American genus, with two species penetrating into our eastern 

 flora. 



The next natural division is called by Dr. Merriam the Neu- 

 tral or Pine-zone. "The characteristic and only tree of the 

 Pine-zone is Piiius ponderosa, which forms an unbroken forest 

 over the whole of the lava plateau above the altitude of 7,000 

 feet, and extends up as high in some of the parks as 8,800 feet. 

 As a distinctive species, however, it loses its character at 

 about 8,200 feet, where it is invaded and soon after replaced 

 by Pinus flexilis, Pseudotsuga taxifolia and Populus tremu- 

 loides. Pinus ponderosa may be regarded as a tree of the mid- 

 dle elevations, occurring between the Pifion and Cedar of the 

 lower hills and the Firs and Spruces of the higher mountains. 

 In such situations it ranges from the highlands of western 

 Texas and northern Mexico, northward along the Rocky 

 Mountains and Sierra Nevada to the dry interior of British 

 Columbia, in latitude fifty-one degrees thirty minutes, avoid- 

 ing the region of excessive rainfall along the coast from north- 

 'ern California northward." 



Next below is the Pinon-zone : 



" The distinctive trees of this zone (6,000-7,000 feet) are the 

 Pifion or Nut Pine (Pinus edulis) and the so-called 'Cedar' 

 (Juniperus occidentalis monosperma), both averaging about 

 sixteen feet in height. The singular checker-bark Juniper 

 (Juniperus pachyphlaa), a very handsome and conspicuous 

 species, occurs in two or three special localities, but is rare. 

 Several large shrubs not observed elsewhere are abundant in 

 parts of this belt, namely, Berberis Fremontii, Rhus aromatica, 

 var. trilobata, and Spircea discolor, var. dumosa. Both the 

 Pifion and Cedar occupy elevations of corresponding tempera- 

 ture in the arid lands from western Texas through New Mexi- 

 co and Arizona and northward to central Colorado, and the 

 Cedar reaches westward to southern California. Closely 

 related and strictly representative forms extend northward 

 through the Great Basin to the Plains of the Columbia. The 

 other species mentioned occupy more or less of the same 

 range, and some of them push northward over the Great 

 Plains as well as the interior basin." 



Space will not permit us to reproduce Dr. Merriam's account 

 of the desert of the Little Colorado, the so-called "Painted 

 Desert "of the earlier explorers, which he crossed and recrossed 

 several times. The extracts we have laid before our readers 

 are sufficient, however, to call attention to the importance and 

 interest of this publication, which is by far the most consider 

 able contribution to our knowledge of the plants and anirn/als 

 of a peculiarly interesting region which has yet appeared. 



