es it reach anything like the size and beauty of proportions that
it attains in California, few trees here being more than ten or
twelve inches in diameter and thirty feet high. It is, however, a very
remarkable-looking object, standing there like some lost or runaway
native of the tropics, naked and painted, beside that dark mossy ocean
of northland conifers. Not even a palm tree would seem more out of place
here.

The oaks, so far as my observation has reached, seem to be most
abundant and to grow largest on the islands of the San Juan and Whidbey
Archipelago. One of the three species of maples that I have seen is only
a bush that makes tangles on the banks of the rivers. Of the other two
one is a small tree, crooked and moss-grown, holding out its leaves to
catch the light that filters down through the close-set spires of the
great spruces. It grows almost everywhere throughout the entire extent
of the forest until the higher slopes of the mountains are reached,
and produces a very picturesque and delightful effect; relieving the
bareness of the great shafts of the evergreens, without being close
enough in its growth to hide them wholly, or to cover the bright mossy
carpet that is spread beneath all the dense parts of the woods.

The other species is also very picturesque and at the same time very
large, the largest tree of its kind that I have ever seen anywhere.
Not even in the great maple woods of Canada have I seen trees either
as large or with so much striking, picturesque character. It is widely
distributed throughout western Washington, but is never found scattered
among the conifers in the dense woods. It keeps together mostly in
magnificent groves by itself on the damp levels along the banks of
streams or lakes where the ground is subject to overflow. In such
situations it attains a height of seventy-five to a hundred feet and a
diameter of four to eight feet. The trunk sends out large limbs toward
its neighbors, laden with long drooping mosses beneath and rows of ferns
on their upper surfaces, thus making a grand series of richly ornamented
interlacing arches, with the leaves laid thick overhead, rendering the
underwood spaces delightfully cool and open. Never have I seen a finer
forest ceiling or a more picturesque one, while the floor, covered with
tall ferns and rubus and thrown into hillocks by the bulging roots,
matches it well. The largest of these maple groves that I have yet found
is on the right b