THE FORESTS OF WASHINGTON 



The timber is tough, close-grained, white, and 

 looks more like pine that any other of the 

 spruces. It splits freely, makes excellent shin- 

 gles and in general use in house-building takes 

 the place of pine. I have seen logs of this spe- 

 cies a hundred feet long and two feet in dia- 

 meter at the upper end. It was named in honor 

 of the old Scotch botanist Archibald Menzies, 

 who came to this coast with Vancouver in 

 1792.1 



The beautiful hemlock spruce with its warm 

 yellow-green foliage is also common in some 

 portions of these woods. It is tall and slender 

 and exceedingly graceful in habit before old 

 age comes on, but the timber is inferior and 

 is seldom used for any other than the rough- 

 est work, such as wharf-building. 



The Western arbor-vitse ^ {Thuja gigantea) 

 grows to a size truly gigantic on low rich 

 ground. Specimens ten feet in diameter and 

 a hundred and forty feet high are not at all 

 rare. Some that I have heard of are said to 

 be fifteen and even eighteen feet thick. Clad 

 in rich, glossy plumes, with gray lichens cov- 

 ering their smooth, tapering boles, perfect trees 



* [This tree, now known to botanists as Picea sitchensis, 

 was named Abies Menziesii by Lindley in 1833.] 



" Also known as "canoe cedar," and described in Jep- 

 Bon's Silva of California under the more recent specific name 

 Thuja plicata. lEditor.] 



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