The Pacific coast is so abundantly supplied with excellent softwoods that only those of good quality have any chance in the local markets. The fact that western hemlock has won and is holding an important place in active competition with such woods as western red cedar, yellow cedar, Sitka spruce, and Douglas fir, is proof that it is valuable material. It is winning its way in the central part of the United States also, but not as rapidly as it has won in the West. The bark of western hemlock is rated high as a tanning material. The bark on young trees is thin, but as the trunks increase in size and age the bark thickens. It is richer in tannin than the bark of eastern hemlock, but is not so extensively used because the demand is less on the Pacific coast. The future of the western hemlock is fairly well assured. Its range is extensive and varied, and lumbermen will be a long time in cutting the last of the present stand. Reproduction is satisfactory. It will be important in future forestry, when people will grow much of the timber they need; but this tree will stick pretty close to the range where nature planted it. MOUNTAIN HEMLOCK (_Tsuga mertensiana_) is a near relative of western hemlock, and occupies the same geographical ranges but higher on the mountains. Near Sitka, Alaska, it occurs at sea level, but southward it rises higher until on the Sierra Nevada mountains in California it is 10,000 feet above sea level. It is one of the timber line trees in many parts of its range, though it is nowhere above all others. It is a difficult matter to state what its average size is. That depends upon the particular region considered. At its best it is 100 feet high or even more; at its poorest it sprawls on the rocks like a shrub. Specimens of fair size are from twenty-five to sixty feet high, and ten to twenty inches in diameter. Cones vary in size fully as much as the trunks. Some are one-half inch in length, others are three inches. The leaves vary no less, some being a one-twelfth inch long, others one inch. The leaves stand out on all sides of the twig, and fall during the third and fourth years. They are bluish-green. The seeds fall in September and October, and are provided with large wings. The wood is light in weight, soft, and pale reddish-brown. The mountain hemlock is nearly always spoken of as spruce by persons who are not botanists. The arrangement of the leaves on the twigs gives the impression that it is a spruce, and among the names by which it is known in its native region are Williamson’s spruce, weeping spruce, alpine spruce, hemlock spruce, Patton’s spruce, and alpine western spruce. There is little prospect that this tree will ever become important as a source of lumber. It is nowhere very abundant, and what timber there is generally stands so remote from mills that little of it will ever be taken out. Botanists and mountain travelers who have made the acquaintance of the mountain