THE MOUNTAIN HEMLOCK.
T. ilartensiana, Sarg.
The mountain hemlock of the West is called by John Muir "the loveliest evergreen in America." Sargent en , , dorses this judgment with emphasis. It grows at high altitudes, fringing upland meadows, watered by glaciers, with groves of the most exquisite beauty. The sweeping, downward-drooping branches, clothed with abundant pea green foliage, silver-lined, resist wind storms and snow burdens by the wonderful pliancy of their fibres. In early autumn the trees are bent over so as to form arches.
Young forests are thus buried out of sight for six months of the year. With the melting of the snow they right them selves gradually, and among the new leaves appear the flowers, dark purple cones and staminate star-flowers, blue as forget-me-nots. Three-angled leaves, whorled on the twig, and cones two to three inches long, set this hemlock apart from its related species, but the leaf-stalk settles once for all the question of its family name.