426 THE ICE AGE IN NORTH AMERICA. 



Beginning by a comparison of our Pacific with our Atlan- 

 tic forests, it is to be noted that the greater part of the trees 

 familiar on the Atlantic side of the continent are conspicu- 

 ously absent from the Pacific forests. 



For example, the Pacific coast has no magnolias, no tulip- 

 tree, no papaw, no linden or basswood, and is very poor in 

 maples ; no locust-trees — neither flowering locust nor honey- 

 locust — nor any leguminous tree ; no cherry large enough for 

 a timber-tree, like our wild black cherry ; no gum-trees (Nyssa 

 nor Liquidambar), nor sorrel-tree, nor kalmia ; no persimmon, 

 or bumelia ; not a holly ; only one ash that may be called a 

 timber-tree ; no catalpa or sassafras ; not a single elm, nor 

 hackberry ; not a mulberry, nor planer-tree, nor maclura ; not 

 a hickory, nor a beech, nor a true chestnut, nor a hornbeam ; 

 barely one birch-tree, and that only far north, where the differ- 

 ences are less striking. But as to coniferous trees, the only 

 missing type is our bald cypress — the so-called cypress of our 

 Southern swamps — and that deficiency is made up by other 

 things. But as to ordinary trees, if you ask what takes the 

 place in Oregon and California of all these missing kinds, 

 which are familiar on our side of the continent, I must answer 

 nothing, or nearly nothing. There is the madrona (Arbutus) 

 instead of our kalmia (both really trees in some places) ; and 

 there is the California laurel instead of our Southern red bay- 

 tree. Nor in any of the genera common to the two does the 

 Pacific forest equal the Atlantic in species. It has not half as 

 many maples, nor ashes, nor poplars, nor walnuts, nor birches, 

 and those it has are of smaller size and of inferior quality ; it 

 has not half as many oaks, and these and the ashes are of so 

 inferior economic value that (as we are told) a passable wagon- 

 wheel can not be made of California wood, nor a really good 

 one in Oregon. . . . 



Now almost all these recur, in more or less similar but not 

 identical species, in Japan, north China, etc. Some of them 

 are likewise European, but more are not so. Extending the 

 comparison to shrubs and herbs, it more and more appears 

 that the forms and types which we count as peculiar to our 

 Atlantic region, when we compare them, as we first naturally 



