WESTERN LARCH. 115 



slender stems furnished that implement for the spinsters. 

 The very bitter aromatic bark affords an excellent tonic, 

 astringent, antiseptic, and febrifuge, and like peruvian bark. 

 is of like efficacy, yields cornine as that does quinine, salts of 

 similar medicinal value; smaller branches for stick brushes 

 are used to render the teeth extremely white; the smaller 

 roots yield a scarlet dye, and the bark has been used for 

 tanning. Found along the whole coast range north to Puget 

 Sound, in Oregon and Washington Territory east into the 

 Cascade Mountains. 



WESTERN LARCH. 



(Larix oceidentalis.) 



•;•:- ••:- -:;• « trees in tears of amber run, 

 Which harden into value by the sun." — Ovid. 



OVID also describes the sisters of Phaeton as having 

 been turned into Larches. But by modern magic pro- 

 cesses the custom is now reversed, and Larches are 

 turned in phaetons for the sisters of our day ; a decidedly 

 delightful improvement on the old plan. 



The Western Larch is an open, spiry, star-spangled, decid- 

 uous conifer, with short and slender depending branches, 

 with no proper boughs nor sprays; therefore, most of all 

 trees, naked, bare, and dead-like in Winter; but if space and 

 air be allowed to encourage and maintain lower branches, 

 they will live as long as the tree survives, to add beauty to 

 the base and more general comeliness throughout; there 

 needs also sufficient shelter to produce the requisite height. 

 Thus, with branches nearly or quite sweeping the ground, 

 thickly set and successively lessening aloft into elongated 

 conic symmetry, the tree is then not utterly spiritless even 

 during the Winter months, as all deciduous trees and shrubs 

 must needs be, more or less. And as all art, especially in 

 architecture and in nature in the landscape, has respect to 

 humanity, at least in some points of view, could the ideal 

 expression be considered complete without these various 

 types of repose and rest — sleep; nay, the lowest reactive 

 symbol of apparent death itself; even bordering upon the 

 dark confines of the real before it burst into renewed life 

 with all its charming and ever changing surprises. 



The Western Larch of the coast of Oregon and northern 

 California, where it grows scatteringly along the banks of 

 streams; is one hundred and twenty to two hundred and 



