he timber from this tree is
perhaps stronger than that of any other conifer in the country. It is
tough and durable and admirably adapted in every way for shipbuilding,
piles, and heavy timbers in general. But its hardness and liability to
warp render it much inferior to white or sugar pine for fine work. In
the lumber markets of California it is known as "Oregon pine" and is
used almost exclusively for spars, bridge timbers, heavy planking, and
the framework of houses.

The same species extends northward in abundance through British Columbia
and southward through the coast and middle regions of Oregon and
California. It is also a common tree in the canyons and hollows of
the Wahsatch Mountains in Utah, where it is called "red pine" and on
portions of the Rocky Mountains and some of the short ranges of the
Great Basin. Along the coast of California it keeps company with the
redwood wherever it can find a favorable opening. On the western slope
of the Sierra, with the yellow pine and incense cedar, it forms a pretty
well-defined belt at a height of from three thousand to six thousand
feet above the sea, and extends into the San Gabriel and San Bernardino
Mountains in Southern California. But, though widely distributed, it
is only in these cool, moist northlands that it reaches its finest
development, tall, straight, elastic, and free from limbs to an immense
height, growing down to tide water, where ships of the largest size may
lie close alongside and load at the least possible cost.

Growing with the Douglas we find the white spruce, or "Sitka pine," as
it is sometimes called. This also is a very beautiful and majestic tree,
frequently attaining a height of two hundred feet or more and a diameter
of five or six feet. It is very abundant in southeastern Alaska, forming
the greater part of the best forests there. Here it is found mostly
around the sides of beaver-dam and other meadows and on the borders of
the streams, especially where the ground is low. One tree that I saw
felled at the head of the Hop-Ranch meadows on the upper Snoqualmie
River, though far from being the largest I have seen, measured a hundred
and eighty feet in length and four and a half in diameter, and was two
hundred and fifty-seven years of age.

In habit and general appearance it resembles the Douglas spruce, but it
is somewhat less slender and the needles grow close together all
around the branchlets and are so stiff and sharp-pointed on the y