i9i3" I 9 I 4-] British Columbia and Washington. 105 



in the Rockies to sea-level in Vancouver Island, and the 

 lovely Clintonia uniflora, are the instances which first occur 

 to me. 



The western mountains are the land of shrubs, and it is 

 curious to think how many of the best-known exotic shrubs 

 which we can see everywhere in this country come from 

 British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, such as Berberis 

 aquifolium (mahonia), Bibes sanguineum, Gaultheria Shallon, 

 Bubus spectabilis, and B. nutkamis, Spiraea aricefolia, and 

 S. Douglasii, which have established themselves in many 

 British gardens. 



Lake Louise is reached from Laggan on the Canadian Pacific 

 Eailway, and lies six miles south of the line and 1000 feet 

 above it, the line itself at Laggan being 5000 feet above sea- 

 level. The lake is surrounded by dense forest of Abies sub- 

 alpina and Bicea Engelmannii, the former curiously rare in 

 European cultivation when one considers how easily the seed 

 can be obtained ; Veitch was the only nurseryman I could get 

 it from a few years ago, and his plants were costly. These 

 two trees are exactly similar in habit, and can scarcely be dis- 

 tinguished at a cursory glance except by the upright cones of 

 the silver fir and the hanging ones of the spruce. There are 

 thickets, too, of Binus contorta — the commonest tree of the 

 Rockies, which springs up at once after a forest fire has swept 

 the ground. Higher up, 1000 feet or more above the lake, 

 grows the rarest of all larches, Larix Lyallii, discovered and 

 described by a Scotsman, David Lyall, who accompanied the 

 American Boundary Commission in the middle of the last 

 century. We found many charming shrubs, none so delight- 

 ful as the white and deliciously scented small-flowered Bhodo- 

 dendvon albifiorum of Hooker. It was in full bloom, and grew 

 in great masses mixed with Menziesia ferruginea, Ledum groen- 

 landica, and Kcdmia microphylla, the mossy ground below gay 

 with the nodding little bells of Linncca borealis and its trailing 

 sprays of shining leaves. Higher up above the timber level 

 close to the snow were beds of the white Cassiope and purple 

 Brianthus, the sole representatives in those regions of the heath 

 tribe. Higher still at Lake Agnes, among the glaciers and 

 moraines, we found the ' Indian Paint-Brush,' forming patches 

 of the brightest scarlet here and there, with many other de- 



