ABIES DOUGLASII. 
7 
There is a gap of about 350 miles, extending all over North California, running down the coast region 
west of the Sierra Nevada, in which the Douglas Spruce apparently does not now occur; we can find no 
mention of it in any traveller’s description of that district. Douglas travelled northwards from San Fran¬ 
cisco through part of it, but in none of his letters does he speak of it (unfortunately of this period there is no 
journal of his travels). Hartweg (. Hort . Soc. Proc., vol. iii.) went from San Francisco up the Sacramento to 
Bear Creek; and although he specified all the Conifers he met with, the Douglas Spruce is not among them. 
W. Murray and Beardsley traversed Northern California in various directions in their expeditions, and they 
never met with the Douglas Spruce until they reached Scots Mountain, a little to the south-west of Mount 
Shasta. In the Pacific Railroad United States Explorations is given a list of plants collected by Mr James 
Snyder under the direction of Dr G. G. Beckwith, United States Association, in an expedition made under 
his charge, from Great Salt Fake, Utah Territory, directly west to the Sacramento Valley in California, and in 
that list the Douglas Spruce does not occur. Again, Brown, the collector of the British Columbia Botanical 
Association, says ( Farmer , 18th May 1866) that in South Oregon Abies Douglasii is becoming rather rare, 
until it almost disappears in California. On this point several questions occur: 1st, Whether the statement is 
well founded ; for, looking to the quantity of Douglas Fir timber which is said to be used in Sacramento and 
other Californian cities at a distance from Santa Cruz, or any forests of the tree known to the south of San 
Francisco, it seems probable that it must exist nearer at hand; 2d, Supposing it to be true, whether this 
disappearance is due to the work of man, or if there is a natural gap which has existed there for unknown 
ages, and is perhaps referable to the operation of geological causes; and 3d, Whether it extends to the Sierra 
Nevada as well as the lower country between it and the coast. We have no actual testimony on this point, 
but Dr Bigelow (“ United States Pacific Railroad Expedition,” vol. iv., 17) says that it grows almost in every 
mountainous region of California, from the coast to the highest range of the Sierra Nevada. The gap may 
probably therefore be limited to the non-mountainous parts of North California. At the same time, it is 
right to mention that Dr Bigelow, of course, does not speak from a personal knowledge of the whole of the 
Sierra Nevada, and that, as regards that range in North California, negative evidence is against him. 
Another question is, whether the trees to the south of the gap are of the same species or variety as those to 
the north of it. As to this point there seems little doubt that they are the same. 
Of course the Douglas Spruce does not occur in the Salt Fake deserts. 
Our information as to the botany of the Rocky Mountains, between Bitter Root Mountain and Pikes 
Peak—47 0 to 39 0 N. lat. of the Rocky Mountains—is very limited, but, such as it is, it does not contain any 
notice of Abies Douglasii. There is a very similar gap here to that in California; indeed, there is a great 
break in the Rocky Mountains themselves, from a little to the south of the 46° N. lat. to a little to the north 
of the 43 0 N. lat., and in this break they have sunk almost to the general level of the country, and seem scarcely 
to deserve the name of mountains. We should expect that the typical Douglas Spruce (supposing it to be 
the typical form) which Lyell saw, stunted, on the Rocky Mountains, at about 48° N. lat. (if we rightly interpret 
his statement to mean that he did find it there), would accompany the mountains on their southward course 
until this break occurs; and that that break of 2 or 3 degrees would sever it from the Mexican form, which 
is plentiful about Pikes Peak, on the Rocky Mountains, in 38° N. lat., and which we do not doubt (although 
we have no information about it) continues to accompany the mountains in their northward course until 
they reach the break above mentioned at about 43 0 N. lat. 
In the Kew Herbarium there are specimens from Independence Bluff, near the sources of the River 
Platte. Pikes Peak must be close to that habitat, for the sources of the Platte circle round the Peak; and 
Dr Parry, in an account of his ascent of that mountain ( Transactions of the Academy of Science in St Louis , 
vol. ii., p. 120, 1863), says that Abies Douglasii \s also common there; and Dr Engelmann (same Transac¬ 
tions, p. 212) gives Fontaine-qui-bouit, at the base of Pikes Peak, as a locality where “ Picea Menziesii, with 
Tsuga Douglasii , reign as monarchs of the forest.” 
The reader must not suppose, from this expression, that the “monarchs” of which he speaks are of the 
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