AP ere. EOS Se 
ER MEE EA Ge ORC et eS IN Ae ae ne eee ee eee ee yee een ws 
efi cain Scie ok eal rai A GR elena Sa mae i a ae Si ei al 
A. Gray—North American Flora. 339 
So much kas been said about this forest, about the two 
gigantic trees which have made it famous, and its Pines 
Ww 
s which are hardly less wonderful, and which in 
Oregon and British Columbia, descending into the plains, yield 
far more timber to the acre than can be found anywhere else, 
and I have myself discoursed upon the subject so largely on 
former occasions, that I may cut short all discourse upon the 
Pacific coast flora and the questions it brings up. | 
I note only these points. Although this flora is richer than 
oO 
more showy than that which brightens our eastern woodlands 
in spring. But, altogether it possesses only one-quarter of the 
number of species of deciduous trees that the Atlantic forest 
has; it is even much poorer than Europe in this respect. 
is destitute not.only of the characteristic trees of the Atlantic 
side, such as Liriodendron, Magnolia, Asimina, Nyssa, Catalpa, 
Carya, and the arboreous Leguminose (Cercis ex- 
e 
mon throughout all the other northern-temperate floras, having 
no Lindens, Elms, Mulberries, Celtis, Beech, Chestnut, Horn- 
beam, and few and small Ashes and Maples. The shrubbery 
and herbaceous vegetation, although rich and varied, is largely 
peculiar, especially at the south. At the riorth we find a fair 
number of species identical with the eastern ; but it is interest- 
ing to remark that this region, interposed between the N. HE. 
Asiatic and the N. E. American and with coast approximate 
to the former, has few of those peculiar genera which, as ave 
floras so widely sundered geographically. Some of these 
types, indeed, occur in the intermediate region, rendering the 
general absence the more noteworthy. nd certain pecu- 
might be expected from their geographical proximity at the 
north. Of course the high northern flora is not here in view. 
: ‘gla : ; 
heirs of the old boreal flora, and if I have plausibly explained 
how Europe lost so much of its portion of a common inheri- 
North America lost so much more. For that the missing types 
Am. Jour. Sct.—Turep SERIES, VoL. XXVIII, No. 167.—Nov., 1884. 
22 
