North America

e method in a general treatise, we find them growing most densely and presenting at the same time the greatest

e between species and species and individual with individual is intense, exposure to the life-giving sunlight being the dominant aim of every one of the contending hosts. As drier or colder regions are approached, but few species can survive and the forests are characterized by their monotony. Where the conditions of heat and moisture are such tha

he distribution of for

n of the forests, prairies, and treeless plains as they existed previous to the coming of Europeans is shown on the accompanying map. For the

FO

alley of the Great Basin region. The irregular circular belt of tree-covered land is closed at the south by the forest on the lowlands of Mexico and Central America. This vast forest belt, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from Panama to northern Canada, presents great variations even in its larger features, and, for convenience, and also with the aim of expres

diversified forests, which are naturally divided into two portions: an eastern division, embracing the Atlantic and Gulf border of the United States, together with the eastern part of the Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes region; and a western division, in which is included the lands bordering the Pacific from near Mount St. Elias southward to the vicinity of San Francisco, and also several irregular branches or detached island-like areas on the Pacific mountains, in the United States and Mexico. The former

changes from locality to locality in both temperature and precipitation, and are characterized by conspicuous changes from one locality to another in the genera and species of trees of which they are composed. In each of the areas occupied by the major divisions of the encircling continental forest belt there are marked variations in elevation, which are accompanied by corresponding climatic changes, and hence by modifications in the forest growths. Of all portions of the continen

and the southern extremity of Florida. Throughout this vast region, within the influence of the trade-winds and of the equatorial rains, the forests are luxuriant and beautiful, except on lowlands not adjacent to the windward side of mountains

tatement cannot be successfully challenged, that a greater variety of plants may be collected on 100 square yards of surface in the humid, tropical lowlands than can be found on 100 square miles in the forest of central Canada.

sion of flowering parasites; the luxuriance of the vines, many of which are armed with spines; and the abundance of the remarkable aerial roots termed lianas. Of the last there is a great variety, some of them of large size and surprisi

interwoven over the surface. The earth from which the dense vegetation derives nourishment is surprisingly deficient in vegetable mould, which is a characteristic feature in the moist forests of temperate and even subarctic regions, where the complete decay of dead vegetation is long delayed. In the tropical forests the annual supply of dead vegetable matter suitable to be transformed into humus is far greater than on a corresponding area in the woods of more northern regions, but decay is so rapid, owing to the uniformly high temperature and the conditions fav

the ferns, each of which is represented by many genera, a large number of species, and multitudes of i

aped stem of tough fibrous wood-so strong and pliant that it defies even the hurricane-in many instances 150 feet above the ground. The tree is a marvel of beauty and elasticity, and, fortunately for Cuba, is one of the most abundant of the larger trees on the island. It is met with almost everywhere; in the centre of broad pasture-lands it often stands alone, tall and straight, while bordering the cultivated fields of the rich planter it forms a shady avenue to his dwelling. This well-named royal palm has also been called the blessed tree, for every part of it has its usefulness to mankind. Certain medicinal qualities are claimed for its roots; the outer por

iety of uses, being a greater blessing, especially to the natives and the poorer descendants of European and African immigrants, t

e United States. The royal palm is native to southern Florida, while the low fan-palms cover much of the northern portion of the same State, and occur even about the Oza

stically beautiful tree-ferns add an indescribable charm to the always varied foliage. The tree-ferns grow farther up the mountains of the torrid zone than do the larger palms (in the same manner that the smaller ferns extend muc

ba, Haiti, the Bahamas, and Jamaica. As is well known, this hard, dark, heavy, fine-grained, and exceedingly durable wood has been used for the best grades of cabinet-work for about two centuries, and is still unsurpassed for the beauty of its grain, susceptibility of a high polish, and the several ways in which it is adapted for the carver'

all others for the making of pulleys, mallets, etc. Many other highly prized woods, not known, however, by familiar names, are al

, but on the border of the central table-land of that republic, where it is supposed to be indigenous, and has now become one of the leading crops of temperate North America, and is cultivated in many other portions of the world. Tobacco was found under cultivation in Mexico at the time of

tree is very handsome, from 12 to 16 feet high, with an upright trunk some 5 feet high; the leaves are lanceolate, with entire margins, and of a bright-green colour; the flowers are inconspicuous, reddish, with yellowish sepals; the fruit, attached by short stems to both trunk and branches, has a yellowish and reddish colour, oblong, about 3 inches

ime of the Spanish conquest. The vanilla-plant is a climbing vine, with lanceolate leaves 18 inches or more in length, and p

quinine is obtained, are justly to be accredited to South America, yet certain varieties of these

of the tropical forest and in the drier interior, grows the agave, from which the national beverage, pulque, is obtained, and another species of the same peculiarly American family of plants supplies great quantities of the tough fibre known as sisal or henequen hemp, particularly on the stony, arid portions of the peninsula of Yucatan. Of interest to children especially is the fact that Mexico exports some 3,000,000 pounds of chewing-gum each year, which is obtained from a plant

ti. One of these, the prickly-pear, as it is termed on account of its pear-like edible fruit, is the emblem of Mexico. A fit legend to place about this unique heraldic design would be the motto inscribed

nadian boundary. Although the cacti tribe is widely distributed, the region where it presents the greatest variety and the largest individuals is in the dry, semi-desert portions of Arizona and the table-lands of central Mexico. It is most at home on sterile, rocky ridges and amid bare cliffs where there appears to be but little soil, but the strong roots strike deep into the earth in search of moisture. The cacti present great diversity of form an

, to jointed and fluted columns, bristling with sharp spines, the largest of which, known as the candelabrum cactus, attains a height of from 40 to 60 feet. In this the largest of all the cacti, which is not uncommon in Arizona and adjacent portions of Mexico, the central upright stem, frequently 20 inc

nd present a freshness and vigour which tell of the abundant store of moisture within the thick rind inclosing their stems. The showy flowers are borne close to the body of the plant or at the ends or edges of the inflated pad-like leaves, and are scentless, except in the case of a few night-blooming species, and attract insects from afar by reason of the conspicuousness of their widely expanded corollas. The fruits also are usually conspicuous, and present many

al branches. Its leaves are stiff, thick-stemmed, and each one terminated by a sharp spine, as is well known from the many examples to be seen under cultivation in Europe

equently acrid juices. Their colours are usually neutral, grayish green, rendered still more inconspicuous by the dust that settles on them, but their flowers are as a rule conspicuous, thus s

y boundary, dividing it from the tropical forest, crosses the southern portion of Florida, and at the extreme southwest is drawn at the Rio Grande. The northern boundary of the Atlantic forest is also an arbitrary line, and follows the fiftieth parallel of latitude from the mouth of the St. Lawrence westward to the region about the Lake of the Woods; along this boundary the varied Atlantic forest merg

ually designated as evergreens. While these general statements are sufficiently accurate for our present purpose, it is to be remembered that some of the broad-leaved trees (Angiosperms) are evergreen, especially in the southern portion of the Atlantic forest, as, for example, some of the oaks, the magnolias, the holly, etc.; while at the north, certain of the conifers (Gymnosperms) shed their leaves each fall, as is conspicuously illustrated by the yellow of the tamarack or larch forests of the n

e strong, tough, hard, and durable woods which has made American tools and implements of such a high grade of excellence that they are in demand in every civilized country. For example, the American ax-helve, made of hickory, is almost a work of art, as well as of utility, and it is prized above all others by foresters the world over. The same tree has aided no less efficiently in the popularity and excellence of American carriages and sleighs, the equal of which for lightness, strength, and durabili

atest size and abundance at the north, especially in New England, and thence westward to the Mississippi Valley, where they are the favourite shade-trees of villages and farms. In regions where the forests have been removed choice specimens of these trees have frequently been saved or subsequently planted, and standing alone, without competition and fully exposed to the light, reach great perfection of form and a high degree of beauty. The oaks are represented by a large number of species and varieties throughout the entire Atlantic forest, but reach their largest size and greatest abundance, both of species and individuals, in central and southern portions of the eastern United States. The same may be said also of the hickories, except th

, the largest and finest of the several species of its genus found in the eastern portion of the United States, attains a great size in the southern Appalachian region, but is best developed in the lower portion of the Mississippi Valley. It is frequently from 50 to 80 feet or more in height, wide-spreading, and in many instances upward of 3 feet in diameter, with dark-green leaves which do not fall in the

issippi basin, where, in addition to magnolias, the tulip-tree, etc., chestnuts, hickories, oaks, and many other genera grow side by side and attain great height and dignity. This is also the centre of dispersion of the American hawthorns, which reach a size and beauty u

drainage basin of the St. Lawrence, together with an extension southward along the Appalachians, the forests are composed largely and over extensive areas almost wholly of coniferous trees. This region of northern evergreens contains in its southern portion sturdy growths of broad-leaved deciduous trees. T

ent, extends westward from southern Newfoundland and the coasts of the maritime provinces of Canada to Minnesota, and occupies nearly t

frequently long-continued droughts of the hot summers. Its wood is soft, compact, with an even, straight grain, and is not conspicuously resinous. The sap-wood is nearly white and the heart of a light brown, slightly tinged with red; it is easily worked and s

the delta region of the Mississippi, and reappears again to the southward of the Ozark Hills. Although not so large, and to many admirers of beautiful trees not so picturesque or pleasing as its relative in the more rigorous climate of the St. Lawrence basin, the southern pine, growing within the reach of the moist, warm winds from the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, is still an attractive tree, especially when young and when freedom is afforded to expand its boughs. It is seldom over 100 feet high, and as cut for lumber has on an average a diam

has a widely expanded base, suitable for support on marshy soil, and reaches a large girth, although seldom over 75 feet high. Aged and most picturesque examples are growing in isolated positions in Lake Drummond, the central water body of the Dismal Swamp, and in many other similar situati

in spring and early summer furnish a wealth of bloom that is scarcely rivalled elsewhere on the continent. In this same region also, but extending westward to Michigan and Minnesota, and even to eastern Nebraska, grows the redbud or Judas-tree, which each May becomes as thickly set throughout all its branches with small crimson blossoms as are the tree-like coral in tropical seas with expanded polyps. This beautiful tree of low growth many times gives to the mountains of Virginia, when seen from a distance, a delicate blush like that which the osiers earlier in the spring impart to the marshy vales and river-banks. A companion of the redbud, but far more widely distributed, is the dogwood or cornel, of several specie

adds alike to fields, fences, and forests than the familiar Virginia creeper. The glory of this widely distributed vine comes in the autumn when its leaves change from green to the most brilliant scarlet. During the season of harvest also, when the trees are arrayed in their greatest splendour, the ground is yellow with golden-rods or purple with asters. This annual carnival of colour embraces the entire Atlantic forest, but is most resplendent in the region of the Hudson and St. Lawrence. A charming little denizen of the Atlantic forest is the lowly and humble arbutus, or Mayflower, which s

nsitions. As its western limit is approached, a change in the species is noted, trees which thrive on uplands and can sustain long-continued summer drought replacing the species best adapted for more humid conditions. The forest is most extended, however, along the streams where white-trunked cottonwoods, frequently of great size, with widely spreading branches, extend even

long from southeast to northwest, and on an average fully 600 miles wide. On the north, more especially in arctic Canada and as it approaches the shore of Bering Sea, it thins out, owing to the severity of the winter climate, the trees become dwarfed and stunted in much the same way as the trees adjacent to the timber-line on high mountains, and is succeeded by the broad treeless plains of the Barren Grounds and tundra. Along its south-central border its extension is again limited by climatic conditions, principally the dryness of the hot summers. The trees are there scattered or form

to one who lingers long in its sombre shade is its most conspicuous characteristic. In the main it is composed of but eight species of trees, namely, white and black spruce, larch or tamarack, canoe-birch, balsam-poplar, aspen, balsam-fir,

northern portion of the Pacific mountains. The region occupied by the great northern forest is interspersed with lakes, some of them of large size, and by innumerable swamps. The spruces and the gray pine grow on the uplands between the lakes and swamps, while the cold, wet bottom-lands are occupied by poplars, dwarf birches, willows, and alders. In the north, near where the forest breaks into outstanding groves and finally gives place to grassy hills, as along the Porcupine River i

is of comparatively small economic importance. Even if the trees were within the reach of a market, their wood is of inferior quality and not generally suitable for lumber. A mo

ible gradations with the forests occupying the Pacific mountains from Alaska southward to Mexico. The junction line between the two is irregular, an

s, which occupy the mountains and higher plateaus and in general are restricted to higher and higher locations with decrease in latitude. This distribution illustrates in a striking manner the dependence of trees on humidity. The forest is densest and the trees in general of greatest size and occur at the lowest elevations on the northwest portion of the Pacific coastal region, where the rainfall is excessive and distributed practically throughout the entire year. The Coast Ranges from Alaska southward to central California, as well as the Cascade Mountains and Sierra Nevada, are tree-clothed. In the interior, and especially in the centra

s, firs, and cedars, and at the south include the giant cactus, arboreal yucca, and the fan-leafed palm. In its medial division are the great forests of western Washington and Oregon, composed mainly of firs and cedars, and the no less magnificent forests of redwood-trees on the Coast Ranges of northern California and the west slope of the Sierra Nevada. Like the boreal forest, the one under consideration is largely co

d trees, and such as are found are usually of small size and but little economic importance. This lack, however, is perhaps m

it occupies an excessively humid region occurs on the west side of the Cascade Mountains in Washington,

10 or more feet. Not only do these magnificent trees reach such great dimensions, but they are thickly set over hundreds of square miles of territory. In thousands of instances the great trunks sheathed in rough thick bark rise straight and massive, with but a slight decrease in diameter, to a height of upward of 80 feet before the first branch is given off. The cedars, the intimate companions of the great firs, are of equally gigantic girth at the base

frequently the case in less humid lands, but are thickly set for mile after mile and league after league, as one threads his difficult way beneath them. So vast is the forest that a person travelling through it soon becomes impressed with the idea that it is interminable. Beneath the deep shade of the lofty boughs there is a rank undergrowth of young firs, cedars, and hemlocks, while in the valleys especially, and on the frequently inundated flood-pl

las Firs, Van

re trees, each large enough to be cut for lumber, whose gnarled and twisted roots clasp the sides of their host and descend to the earth beneath. The beauty of these fallen giants when overgrown with thick layers of variegated moss and exquisitely decorated with hundreds of small hemlocks and a multitude of gracefully bending fern-fronds, always fresh in colour and usually beaded with moisture, is beyond the power of the most skilful artist to adequately portray. The fascination

s, transporting the logs to mills, and sawing them into lumber, much of which is loaded on ships and widely distributed. So vast is the forest, however, that as yet the natural conditions are

st Range of north California, where the redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) is the all-important and characteristic tree. This redwood forest begins at the south in the vicin

wood forest,

both in form and colour, and is markedly gregarious in habit. As stated by Henry Gannett, it forms the densest forest known if the comparison is made on the basis of the amount of merchantable lumber growing on a given unit of area. For example, the yellow-pine forests of the Southern Atlantic and Gulf States contain on an average about 5,000 feet, board measure (square feet of boards an inch thick), of timber per acre, and in the moderately dense portion of the white-pine forests of the Great Lakes region the average is about the same. In each of these regions, famed for their lumber, a tract containing 10,000 feet of lumber per acre would be considered as heavily forested. In the redwood forests of California, however, 50,000 feet of lumber per acre is not rare over extensive areas, while for special t

most pure white, and is light, soft, coarse-grained, and susceptible of a high polish. It is the most common and most val

as yet measured has a height of 325 feet, and the largest a diameter of 35 feet 8 inches inside the bark and 4 feet above the ground. The age of one of these giants, as shown by the number of rings of growth in its trunk, is about thirteen hundred years; another, 24 feet in diameter, is twenty-two hundred years old; and a third showed over four thousand rings of

in diameter at the ground and 10 feet in diameter 200 feet above the ground, showing that the taper of the trunk as a whole is charmingly fine. And when you stand back far enough to see the massive columns from the swelling instep to the lofty summit dissolving in a dome of verdure, you rejoice in the unrivalled display of combined grandeur and beauty. About 100 feet or more of the trunk is usually branchless, but its massive simplicity is relieved by the bark furrows, which, instead of making an irregular network, run evenly parallel, like the fluting of an architectural column, and to some extent by tufts of slender sprays that wave lightly in the winds and cast flecks of shade, seeming to have been pinned on here and there for the sake of beauty only. The young trees have slender simple branches down to the ground, put on with strict regularity, sharply aspiring at the top, horizontal about half-way down, and drooping in handsome curves at the base. By the time the sapling is five or six hundred years old this spiry, feathery, juvenile habit merges into a firm, rounded dome form of middle age, which in turn takes on the eccentric picturesqueness of old age. No other tree in the Sierra fo

scaped to a great extent the destruction which everywhere attends the advent

y the genus numbered at least 50 species, as has been shown by leaf impressions, fossil wood, and cones buried in the rocks of New Zealand and Chile on the south, Spitzbergen and Greenland on the north. Over North America they extend from the Atlantic t

two species of pines growing in drier situations which in a general view are even more characteristic of the Pacific forest than are the sequoias. Th

base of from 8 to 14, and in some instances of over 20 feet. Individual trees are known which have a height of 245 feet and are 18 feet in diameter. The branches are usually high above the ground and widely spreading. In the case of well-grown individuals they leave the main trunk with a sweeping, downward curve, which midway out changes to an upward curve, and at the extreme distal end droops once more. At the extremity of many of the far-reaching boughs there are suspended one or two cones

growing in the woods of America, if not the most majestic of its kindred in the world. Its onl

es which always excite wonder and admiration. In the clear air and brilliant sunlight of the Californian mountains the luxuriant plume-like leaves far aloft appear to be formed of burnished silver or have the yellow of gold, according as the light strikes them, and at night the lofty boughs swayed by the winds make music such as no other forest can produce. Nothing in the vegetable world, not

and New Mexico westward to within hearing of the surf of the Pacific Ocean. It ranks second in size to the sugar-pine, but is a near rival in strength and nobleness of form. As might be inferred from its wide distribution, the silver pine had adapted itself to a great range of conditions, not only of climate, but of soil and height above the sea. It is found from an elevation of about 2,000 feet above the sea up the mountainsides nearly to timber-line, and flourishes ali

re are several species. They are seldom over 35 or 40 feet high, and are not remarkable for beauty, although they furnish an agreeable feature in the sparsely forest-clothed and semiarid region where they thrive best, but they bear a profusion of small cones, each of which contains perhaps a dozen edible and nutritious se

without trees other than the larger growths of cacti and yucca. Similar conditions are present in northern Mexico, but on the western side of t

representatives of 158 genera of plants, of which 94 genera occur in the Atlantic and 59 in the Pacific side of the continent, and 48

ELESS PLAINS,

lateaus on the west side of the interior Continental basin is gradual. The change occurs in the prairie region, where a struggle has been in progress for thousands of years between the conditions favouring and those adverse to tree growth. The balance of power, so to speak, is the amount of rain or of soil-stored moisture during

r the greater portion of this region is equal to or exceeds that of many well-forested countries, averaging as it does in general about 30 inches. But the prairies lie between the more humid forest-covered regions on the east and the less humid or subarid plateaus on the west, and during the summer season droughts and hot, scorching winds are of common occurrence. It is the long dry summer that establishes the critical conditions, particularly about the eastern and northern borders of the prairies. Of secondary importance is the character of the soil. An exceedingly fine soil, like that of the prairies, as has been pointed out by J. D. Whitney, by excluding the air from the roots of trees is detrimental to their growth. Where the dryness of the summers make the lives of trees precarious the

he great plateaus, remote from streams, trees can be made to grow only by the aid of irrigation. If this region had never been swept by fire it is safe to say it would still be treeless. Each of the explanations referred to above to account for the treeless condition of the prairies-one referring it to soil conditions, and the other to the former prevalence of fires-certainly has much in its favour, and for certain localities seems satisfactory, but each point of view should include a broader range and recognise the fact that the requisite critical condition

ged droughts occur. At the south, in Mexico and the adjacent portion of the United States, the trade-winds blow over a region which is more highly heated than the ocean from which they come, and are hence drying winds. To the west of the Great plateaus rise the Rocky Mountains, where climatic conditions are different on account of elevation, and, as we have seen, forests occur at considerable eleva

ream-coloured marble. These mud-flats or playas are frequently absolutely without plant life. Excepting the playas, however, and, in numerous instances, a narrow belt of ground encircling them, which is white with efflorescent salts, the valleys of even the most arid portion of the Great Basin region are generally plant-covered. The most common and most widely spread of the shrubs on these shadeless plains is the sage-brush. So characteristic is this plant of countle

f trees in the prairie region and the adjacent plateaus cannot be applied to scarcely less extensive treeless plains at the far north, where rain falls in summer and the soil is always abundantly charged with moisture. It needs no argument to show that the cont

LESS MOU

s there more intense and the hours of light each day longer than in the valleys below, and the plants adapted to such conditions pass through their annual circle of changes from sprouting seed to mature fruit with remarkable rapidity. In many instances the mountain-climber finds beautiful lilies unfolding their sun-dyed blossoms at the bottom of well-like depressions in lingering snow-banks. The gleaming mountain-peaks when seen from afar are said to be crowned with snow, but the mountaineer rejoices in the knowledge that their cold diadems are wreathed and festooned about their lower margins with lovely blossoms. Many mountains less ambitious than their neighbours have the garlands without the crown. An alpine flora is present on the Pacific mountains from Mexico northward to Alaska. Like the "timber-line" and the "snow-line," the intermediate belt of profusely flowering herbaceous plants descends lower and lower with decrease in latitude; on the great volcanic cones of Mexico it has an elevation of over 15,000 feet; on the Sierra Nevada the greatest wealth of flowers occurs at about 12,000 feet; on Mount Rainie

suggested on the treeless summits of the White Mountains, but although classed by botanists among alpine floras, the plants growing there fail to give a true idea of the display characteristic of the mountains which mak

even for a given locality. The study of extinct floras has shown that during the preceding ages in the earth's history marvellous changes in the plants of many regions, and, in fact, of the entire earth's surface, have taken place. The distinct impressions of palm-leaves, for example, are commonly found in the rocks of the Cascade Mountains, where spruces, firs, and cedars now dominate the landscape. Still more striking is the fact that even treeless Greenland and the largely ice-covered islands of the arctic archipelago were formerly clothed with forests as luxuriant and varied as those now growing in the southern Appalachian region. Although the migrations of existing forests during the few centuries of which we have historic records have been too slow to be appreciated by man, yet it is safe to conclude that changes similar to, and in fact a conti

ERA

ns of California. T. Fi

United States Department of Agriculture,

orth America. Tenth Census of the United

logical Survey. R