Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol02B.djvu/67

Rh sources of the Stehekin, where it attains a very fair size for this region, ranging from 50 to 90 feet in height and from 12 to 27 inches in diameter. The altitudinal range is greater than was expected, from 3100 feet to 5800 feet, and a tree supposed to be of this species was found as low as 2100 feet in the Stehekin Valley.

"The tree is sometimes taken for the western hemlock, but may be distinguished by the erect top of the sapling, the cones long, purple, and more or less massed about the top of the tree; and the mature tree has an unusually thick, roughly corrugated bark: while in the western hemlock the top is generally drooping, the cones small, oval, and brown, and well distributed over the branches, and the mature tree has a comparatively thin bark. The wood is close grained and of fine texture, and is quite suitable for lumber or fuel, but is not much used on account of its growing usually in inaccessible situations."

Near Crater Lake in Southern Oregon, Mr. Leiberg (Cascade Forest Reserve Report, pp. 245, 259), says:—"A few scattered groves of Patton hemlock occur in the southern tracts, some of which are of large size, occasional individuals reaching six to seven feet in diameter. Occasional stands of Patton hemlock 200 to 300 years old exhibit fine proportions at this elevation, 6000 feet; the species usually grows in close groups, composed of ten or twenty individuals, collected together on what appears to be a common root; such close growth develops clear trunks, though not commonly of large diameter. Stands of this character sometimes run as high as 25,000 feet per acre."

Though now introduced for about fifty-five years this tree has made but little show in our gardens, as the climate of most parts of England is probably too warm for it. I have seen flourishing specimens of no great size in several places, the best, perhaps, being one at Tyberton Court, Herefordshire, the seat of Chandos Lee Warner, Esq., where there is a tree of the typical form 43 feet high by about 3½ feet in girth, said to be fifty years old, and perhaps one of those introduced by William Murray, and sent out by Lawson.

In Scotland it seems to thrive even better, especially at Murthly Castle, where there is a fine group of trees on a lawn (Plate 67). When measured for the Conifer Conference in 1892 the best of these was 35 feet by 3 feet 10 inches, another 30 feet by 4 feet. When I last saw them in September 1906 the tallest tree on the left of the row was 47 feet by 3 feet 8 inches, the tree in the middle with weeping branches 43 feet by 4 feet 2 inches, and the thickest between these two was 6 feet 7 inches in girth. The difference in the habit'of these three is well shown in the plate. They produced seed in 1887, from which a number were raised and planted at Murthly. These have grown slowly, and the tallest in 1906 were six or seven feet high, though quite healthy; and the growth of seedlings which I raised from seed gathered on Mount Rainier is extremely slow.

At Keillour, Henry measured, in 1904, a specimen which was 4o feet by 3 feet 9 inches; and at the Cairnies, near Perth, the seat of Major R.M. Patton, there were in 1892 two specimens little inferior to those at Murthly. Rh