232 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



tion, and explains it by saying that the position of the cones "is evidently due to the 

 thickness of the short lateral branchlets, on which they are terminal and which are 

 sometimes so rigid that the weight of the cones does not make them pendent." 



Distribution 



This tree is only found at high elevations, where it has much the same 

 geographical range as the western hemlock, but it extends farther south in California 

 and reaches its southern limit at 9000 to 10,000 feet on the south fork of King River 

 in the Sierra Nevada. 



In the north it descends to sea level on Baranoff Island, and on the shores of 

 Yes Bay in Alaska, lat. 55' 54' N., where Mr. Martin Gorman collected it. As 

 a rule it is a tree of high altitudes, growing on exposed ridges and slopes near 

 the upper limit of the forest, in company with Abies lasiocarpa, Picea Engelmanni, 

 and Pinus albicaulis. In the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia Mrs. Nicholl 

 found it as a good-sized tree near Glacier up to 7000 feet, though Wilcox,^ in his 

 excellent account of the trees of that region, pp. 61-65, does not mention it. 



Though usually a more or less stunted and ragged tree, it attains a large size 

 on the Cascade Mountains, where I saw it in perfection on the road from Longmire 

 Springs to Paradise Valley, on the south side of Mount Tacoma,- in August 1904, 

 first at about 4000 feet, where it was only a scattered tree, and higher up it mixed 

 with the western hemlock in a splendid forest. I was not able to distinguish the 

 two species by their bark, though when not crowded, the habit of Hooker's hemlock 

 is very distinct ; but they could be identified by the fallen cones under the trees. 

 The largest that I measured here was about 150 feet by 13 feet 8 inches. Higher 

 up, where the forest'' opened out into glades at the bottom of the Paradise Valley, 

 which is, in Professor Sargent's opinion, one of the most interesting in America for 

 its alpine flora, it assumed a different and more flat-topped habit ; the largest here 

 that I measured was 108 feet by 13 feet 3 inches. It grew in company with Abies 

 lasiocarpa, and seedlings of both were numerous on rotten logs on the shady sides of 

 the clumps in which they always grew. 



The tree in a very stunted state reaches the timber line — about 7500 feet — in 

 company with Abies lasiocarpa and Cupressus nootkateiisis ; but in California, 

 J. Muir* measured a specimen at 9500 feet, near the margin of Lake Hollow, 

 which was 19 feet 7 inches in girth at 4 feet from the ground. 



Mr. Gorman gives an excellent account of the tree in his Survey of the 

 Eastern Part of tlie Washington Forest Reserve, pp. 335-336, from which I quote 

 as follows ; — 



"This hemlock is confined to the moist valleys and vicinity of the passes. It is 

 the prevailing tree in Cascade Pass, 5421 feet, and is quite common about the 



' 7'he Rockies oj Canada, 61-65 (1900). 



2 The local name is Mount Tacoma, but in maps and writings it is usually called Mount Rainier. 



^ An account of this forest, with two beautiful illustrations of "Patten's spruce," is given in Gardin and Forest, x. 

 I, figs. I. 2 (1897). 



* Mountains of California, p. 20. 



