106 Trees and Shrubs, &c, of [Sess. 



light fill low-growing flowers, the purple Pcnstemon fruticosus 

 and white Pulsatilla occidentalis. 



The Rockies are a silent land ; there are few birds and 

 beasts ; the sudden shrill whistling of the marmots among the 

 higher rocks startles you greatly. There are little striped 

 chipmunks so tame as to feed from your hand. Of the larger 

 animals the Rocky Mountain goats are plentiful enough, a 

 curious long-faced beast, more nearly allied zoologically to the 

 antelopes than the goats. The Rocky Mountain sheep (Ovis 

 montana) has been driven far into the fastnesses by the railway 

 down in the valley. 



Our next stopping -place was the little wooden hotel at 

 Glacier station in the Selkirks. Here the timber takes on a 

 western and luxuriant look, Tsuga Albertiana, Thuya gigantea, 

 and the Douglas fir being the prevailing trees, with the graceful 

 Tsuga Hookeriana forming dense forests higher up right to the 

 edge of the glaciers. The mountain peaks are higher and the 

 glaciers much larger than those of the Lake Louise country. 

 The great Illicilliwaat Glacier, with Mount Sir Donald tower- 

 ing above it, is a very splendid and never-to-be-forgotten 

 spectacle. Many of the Canadian Pacific pioneers have left 

 their names on the mountains. We saw here two interesting 

 mountain-ashes, Sorbus occidentalis and S. sitchensis, with their 

 fruit beginning to colour. The gooseberry and raspberry tribes 

 are represented by many fine species, and in the valleys grows 

 a beautiful alder, Alnus sitchensis ; also that most detested of 

 all western shrubs, Fatsia horrida, or ' Devil's Club.' Stories 

 are told of men who, having lost their way and become en- 

 tangled in thickets of these prickly stems, have died from the 

 results. The most charming of the smaller plants are Mimulus 

 Zewisii, the red flowering musk which fringes the watercourses, 

 and the delicate waxen Clintonia uniflora. I must not for- 

 get, too, the several charming blaeberries, of which the com- 

 monest were Vaccinium ovalifolium and V. globulare, the 

 fruit of both much the same in size and flavour as our own 

 blaeberry. High up at timber-line grows Pinus cdbicaulis, 

 the most interesting of the five-needled Alpine pines, as, 

 unlike the others, it is of great rarity in cultivation, no doubt 

 owing to the fact that the squirrels and Clarke's Crows almost 

 always pick the seeds out of the cones before they are ripe. 



