File:The natural history of Washington territory, with much relating to Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oregon, and California, between the thirty-sixth and forty-ninth parallels of latitude, being those (14781110713).jpg

Identifier: naturalhistoryof00coop (find matches)
Title: The natural history of Washington territory, with much relating to Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oregon, and California, between the thirty-sixth and forty-ninth parallels of latitude, being those parts of the final reports on the survey of the Northern Pacific railroad route, containing the climate and physical geography, with full catalogues and descriptions of the plants and animals collected from 1853 to 1857
Year: 1859 (1850s)
Authors: Cooper, J. G. (James Graham), 1830-1902 Suckley, George, 1830-1869 Cooper, William, 1798?-1864 Gibbs, George, 1815-1873 Gray, Asa, 1810-1888 LeConte, John L. (John Lawrence), 1825-1883 United States. War Dept. Reports of explorations and surveys, to ascertain the ... route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : Baillière brothers, London, H. Baillière (etc., etc.)
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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overed with a thick bark, resembling, in its ashy color and deep furrows, that of the chestnut.The wood is rather coarse-grained and liable to shrink, but is more used for lumber than anyother, being adapted for all kinds of rough work exposed to the weather. It also forms excel-lent fire-wood even when green, and in dead trees the bark and wood are often so full of resinas to burn like a torch. From its combustibility extensive tracts of this forest get burnt everyyear, taking fire from friction or any other slight cause. During our ascent of the westernslopes of the Cascade range we passed for days through dead forests, perhaps burnt by igni-tion from the hot ashes which were thrown out from Mount St. Helens several years before;but large tracts were on fire at the same time, filling the air with smoke, so that we could notsee the surrounding country for several days. Large tracts of the eastern slopes of the Coastrange are also desolated by the same cause. X > o oo
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o It: S > -r Ith THE BOTANY OF THE ROUTE. 21 The fir forms the mass of forest growth on the dry, gravelly soils, from an elevation ofprobably 3,000 feet on the Cascade range, entirely across the valley to the summits of the Coastrange, west of which it is almost entirely replaced by another species, and it is not found at allon lands subject to inundation. It is only where it abounds that extensive tracts are foundkilled by conflagration. The tree known as yellow fir in the country (A. grandis) I have met with only on thesandy alluvial river banks between the Cascade and Coast ranges, to which limits I believe it isvery strictly confined in this Territory. I do not know its highest limits, but suppose that theinfluence of salt water may determine its most western range along the rivers, as it is strictlylimited by tide-water. Its foliage is denser and darker than that of the preceding, and it is afine looking tree, growing much higher than any other, often exceeding 300 feet. This,

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