od being
very tough, it is almost impossible to get through them; and
they form one of the most serious obstructions to surveying or
hunting in the mountains. The leaf is parted in seven dentated
points, and is of a light green. These bushes make a handsome
thicket at any time from early spring to late autumn, being
ornamented with small red flowers in spring and with brilliant
scarlet leaves in autumn.
Another shrubby tree, which makes dense thickets in low or overflowed lands, is the Oregon crab-apple (Pyrus Rivularis). This really pretty tree grows in groves twenty feet in height, und so closely as with its tough, thorny branches to form impenetrable barriers against *any but the smaller animals of the forest. The fruit is small and good-flavored, growing in clusters. The tree is a good one to graft upon, being hardy and finegrained.
Another tree used to graft on is the wild cherry (Cerasus Mollis ), which closely resembles the cultivated kinds, except in its small and bitter fruit. In open places it becomes a branching, handsome shade-tree, but in damp ravines sometimes shoots up seventy feet high, having its foliage all near the top.
When we undertake to pierce the woods of the Coast Mountains, we find, in the first place, the ground covered as thickly as they can stand with trees from three to fourteen feet in diameter, and from seventy to three hundred feet in height. Wherever there is room made by deca}*, or fire, or tempest, springs up another thicker growth, of which the most fortu nately located will live, to the exclusion of the others. Every ravine, creek, margin, or springy piece of ground is densely covered with vine-maple, cotton-wood, or crab-apple.
As if these were not enough for the soil to support, every interstice is filled with shrubs, some tough and woody, others of the vining and thorny description. Of shrubs, the sallal (Gaultheria Shallon) is most abundant. It varies greatly in height, growing seven or eight feet tall near the coast, and only two or three in the forest. The stem is reddish, the leaves glossy, green, and oval, and the flower pink. Its fruit is a berry of which tfie Indians are very fond, tasting much like summer- apple. This shrub is an evergreen.
Three varieties of huckleberries belong to the same range,—
