It is a singular fact that this beautiful shrub reappears as far north as Port Townsend, while it avoids intermediate country in both Oregon and Washington.
On the east side of the Cascades and on the Blue Mountains, the trees not common to the whole State are the larch, or tamarack (. Larix occidentalism, used for lumber; Larix lyallii, a small larch; Pinus albicaulis, a mountain pine; Pinus monticola , or silver pine; mountain mahogany, Cercocarpus ledifolius ; Juni- perus occidentalism mountain juniper; and along the streams in East Oregon and Washington a small birch, Betula occidentalism the box-elder, and the sumach. Doubtless some few trees and many shrubs have escaped notice, but the omissions are unimportant. All that is here said of Oregon applies equally to Washington, where Puget Sound might be read for Columbia River, while the trees of the mountain ranges and sea-coast are the same in both States, with some local exceptions, such as that of the Port Orford cedar.
Washington contains more large bodies of timber standing on level ground than Oregon does. An immense extent of fir and cedar forest encircles the whole sound and borders all the rivers, besides that which is found on the foot-hills of the Caseado and Coast ranges. It is estimated that three-fourths of West Washington is covered with forest, a large proportion of which is the finest timber in the world, for size and durability. It is nothing unusual to find a piece of several thousand acres of fir, averaging three and a half feet in diameter at the stump, and standing two hundred feet without a limb, the top being seventy feet higher. Three hundred feet is not an extraordinary growth in Washington. It is estimated that the area of forest land in Oregon and Washington covers sixty-five thousand square miles. Not all of this timber is accessible, nor all of it valuable for market, and yet the quantity is immense that is marketable. Some day it will all be found fit for lumber-making, but at present only the largest and straightest trees are sawed up, and these in a very wasteful manner, a great deal being thrown away and burned up, except in East Washington, where, timber being scarce and the mills located in the mountains, slab and unmarketable lumber is cut up into firewood.
The mills of Oregon manufacture about one hundred and
