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1875 . 
THE GARDENER’S MONTHLY. 
151 
takhii up his residence here. I don’t wish to in¬ 
fringe ^qn your valuable columns, hut as Mr. C. 
has taken the trouble to mislead you,/! write 
merely to correct. I wish to give you/a correct 
list of houses, as we were ten year-ago, and as 
we are to-day. Ten years ago Jjjfr. Galvin had 
one house, Mr. Padden two, Wilson three; 
that completed the li&J of florists. Now Galvin & 
Geraghty nine houses, Smith & Butler six. Fad- 
den six, Hardwick five, Findlay two, McCleash 
One, Maher two, Reynolds two, Thurston three 
single houses some two hundred feet long each, 
Mr. P. Caswell sja: large houses, Waring four 
^ houses, Lawton three, and many more. We are 
not going ba^t, Mr. Editor, in Newport; on 
the contrary, I think we are now progressing 
very fasj^ and in a^short time we shal\be able 
to compare favorably with old Scarborough, and 
in tjlbe we will make a good record in specimen 
plants. _ _ _ . 
THE CONIFEJLE OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 
BY J>it. GEO. ENGELMANN. 
Lecture before the Washington University . 
After traversing those immense treeless plains 
^frest of us, a chain of mountains rises suddenly 
like the rocky bound of a great ocean. On the 
slopes, in the valleys of those mountains, trees 
and forests, which we had missed so long, again 
welcome us. But no deciduous trees, adorned 
with a fresh fullness of foliage in one season, and 
entirely destitute of leaves in another, diversify 
the somber grahdeur of those ever green moun¬ 
tain woods, which seem to know no summer nor 
winter. The natural history of these forests will 
be the theme of this evening’s lecture. 
Just as in our low lands we observe a great 
diversity of generic and specific forms among our 
f deciduous trees, among our maples, our hickories, 
and above all among our oaks, so these moun¬ 
tains abound in numerous forms, or species, as 
scientific nomenclature calls them, of evergreens, 
of conifers, different in their shape and size, in 
their foliage and color, in their fruit (cones) and 
seeds. 
These mountains, these forests, commence at 
ah elevation above the ocean of 5,000 or 6,000 feet 
—an elevation where, on the Swiss Alps, trees 
already cease to grow ; and they extend up to the 
flanks of the mountains, far above the limit where, 
on those European mountains, eternal snow aud 
ice cut off all kinds of vegetation. 
In other words, the mean temperature of this 
mountain region is considerably higher than its 
Missouri ^Botanical Garden 
» ' . Seorge Engelmann Papers 
great altitude and the anolOgy of European 
mountains would induce us to expect it. 
The explanation of this interesting and im- > 
portant physical fact will be found in the im¬ 
mense extent of that elevated country. We have 
here no isolated mountain chains or single peaks 
before us, but a large part of a whole continent 
lifted high up above the general level. 
It is, in fact, a colossal plateau, rising gradually 
and almost insensibly from the Mississippi to the 
base of the mountains; then suddenly, with 
these mountains, undulating to another chain 
/ of mountains, until it abruptly terminates on the 
Pacific; extending from high norther latitudes 
down into Mexico, and comprising the greater 
part of that country—an extent of nearly 3,000 
miles from northwest to southeast, and of about 
1,500 miles in its greatest breadth from east to 
west, taking in the higher part of the plains, 
and elevated between 4,000 and 6,000 feet above 
the oceans. 
THIS PLATEAU 
(or, as we can consider it, this great geological 
swell of the earth’s surface) carries up with it the 
general temperature of this surface in those lati¬ 
tudes, modified, of course, by the conditions of 
its great altitude, the rarity and transparency of 
the atmosphere, the powerful evaporation and 
radiation. 
The mountain ranges themselves rise like 
crests or wrinkles from this plateau, and we will 
not go far amiss if we consider the climatologi¬ 
cal effeej^of their altitude as if the base from 
which they rise were level with the sea shore, 
and not itself already mountain high. 
The treeless summit of Mount Washington in 
New Hampshire is scarcely higher than the plains 
at the foot of Pike’s Peak at the site of the^flour- 
ishing city of Colorado Springs, where the forests 
only begin. The forests really extend up the 
mountains from an altitude of 5,000 or 6,000 feet 
above the sea to that of 11,500, or even nearly 
12,000 feet, which is 6,000 to .7,000 feet above the 
plain; the very elevation above the ocean at 
which we find the timber line on the Swiss Alps, 
which lie in a higher latitude ; on Mount Etna, 
in nearly the same latitude ; and even on the 
Peak of Teneriffe, ten degrees farther south than 
Pike’s Peak. 
It is, then, not so jplfcii the elevation above 
the ocean as the elevation above the high plateau 
which is the essential element in the climatology, 
and, with it, the distribution of the forests of 
these mounteute. MTSSOTJRI 
BOTANICAL. 
\ GARPEN. 
7 8 9 10 Missou 
Botanic 
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