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186 It is scarce in the dry belt of country east of the Cascade Mountains, but common in the Selkirk and Gold ranges, though, so far as I know, it never extends to the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains.

On the coast and in Vancouver Island it attains an immense size. I have never measured trees more than 200 to 220 feet high, but Prof Sheldon says that it attains 250 feet in Oregon, though no actual measurements are given. As regards their girth, I have measured two trees which may have grown from the same root, so close do they stand together, one of which was 39, the other 25 feet at 5 feet from the ground. These stand on Mr. Barkley's farm in Vancouver Island, in swampy land near sea level, and are figured in Plate 56. At over 2000 feet elevation in Oregon I measured another, also a twin tree, which was 30 feet in girth. Mr. Anderson states that he has seen Indian canoes 6 feet and more from the level of the gunwale to the bottom, hewn out of a log of this tree, such canoes being often 50 feet and more long, A hewn plank 5 feet wide by 15 feet long is in the museum at Victoria, B.C., and split boards, quite straight, 12 feet long and 15 inches wide, are made from it without difficulty.

The natural reproduction by seed was, wherever I saw it, very good, though in the densest shade the western hemlock seemed to have the advantage.

Wherever I have seen this tree growing in England and Scotland it is a vigorous, healthy tree of great beauty and promise, and one that I think is likely in fifty years or so to become a more valuable timber tree than the silver fir or spruce.

It has been stated in a report by Herr Bohm, in the March number of the ''Zeitschrift für Forst. u. JagdweserJagdwesen [sic] for 1896, that the parasitic fungus Pestalozzia funerea'' has done serious damage to the tree in North Germany, and statements to the same effect have been made elsewhere; but I can say that out of the thousands of this tree that I have raised from English seed and planted out in a bad soil and climate, I have never had any die from any disease whatever, and have found it an easier tree both to raise and to transplant than any other conifer. It will grow on almost any soil at the rate of at least one foot per annum, as in damp, cold bottoms where the spruce will hardly thrive, on the poor dry oolite soil of the Cotswold hills, and seems equally indifferent to wind, damp, and spring frosts. It seldom loses its leader, is rarely blown down, endures heavy shade, and transplants both in