mony.

The inviting openness of the Sierra woods is one of their most distinguishing characteristics. All the species stand more or less apart in groves or small, irregular groups, enabling one to find a way nearly everywhere, along sunny colonnades and through openings that have a smooth, parklike surface, strewn with brown needles and burs. Now you cross a wild garden, now a meadow, now a ferny, willowy stream; and ever and anon you emerge from all the groves and flowers upon some granite pavement or high, bare ridge, commanding glorious views above the waving sea of evergreens far and near.

One would experience but little difficulty in riding on horseback through the successive belts, all the way up to the storm-beaten fringes of the alps. The deep, precipitous cañons, however, that come down from the axis of the range, at intervals of eight or ten miles, cut the belts more or less completely into sections, and prevent the mounted traveler from tracing them lengthwise.

This simple arrangement in zones and sections brings the forest, as a whole, within the comprehension of every observer. The different species are ever found occupying the same relative positions to one another, as controlled by their various capabilities, soil, climate, etc.; and so appreciable are these relations, one need never be at a loss in determining, within a few hundred feet, the elevation above sea-level by the trees alone; for, notwithstanding some of the species range upward for several thousand feet, and all pass one another more or less, yet even those possessing the greatest vertical range are available in this connection, inasmuch as they take on new forms corresponding with the variations in altitude.

Crossing the level treeless plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin from the west, on reaching the Sierra foot-hills, you enter

small oaks and pines, planted so far apart that not one-twentieth of the surface of the ground is in shade at clear noon-day. After advancing fifteen or twenty miles, and making an ascent of from two to three thousand feet, you reach the lower margin of the main pine-belt, composed of the gigantic sugar-pine, yellow-pine, Douglas spruce, incense-cedar, and sequoia. Next you come to the magnificent silver-fir belt, and lastly to the upper pine belt, which sweeps up the rocky acclivities of the alps in a dwarfed, wavering fringe to a height of from ten to twelve thousand feet.

It appears, therefore, that the trees forming the upper and lower margins of the general forest are somewhat alike, dwarfed and scattered by snow and frost, drought and sun-fire, while colossal proportions are attained only in the middle regions, where both soil and climate are most favorable.

This general order of distribution, with reference to climate dependent on elevation, is perceived at once, but there are other harmonies, as far-reaching in this connection, that become manifest only after patient observation and study. Perhaps the most interesting of these is the arrangement of the forests in long, curving bands, braided together into lace-like patterns, and outspread in charming variety from one end of the range to the other. The key to this singularly beautiful harmony is the ancient glaciers; where they flowed the trees followed, tracing their wavering courses along cañons, over ridges, over high rolling plateaus. The cedars of Lebanon, says Hooker, are growing upon one of the moraines of an ancient glacier. All the forests of the Sierra are growing upon moraines. But moraines vanish like the glaciers that make them. Every storm. that falls upon them wastes them, cutting gaps, disintegrating bowlders, and carrying away their decaying material into new formations, until at length they are no longer recognizable by any save students, who trace their transitional forms down from the fresh moraines still in process of formation, through those that are more and more ancient, and more and more obscured by vegetation and all kinds of post-glacial weathering.

These studies invariably show that the soils on which the forests are growing were not produced by the slow erosion of the atmosphere, but by the direct mechanical action of glaciers, which crushed and ground them from the solid flank of the range, and,

EDGE OF THE TIMBER-LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA.

in their slow recession at the close of the iceperiod, left them outspread in beds available for tree-growth. For, notwithstanding the many august implements employed by Nature as modifiers and reformers of soils, the glacier thus far has been the only great producer. But however great the quantity thus produced, had the ice-sheet that once covered all the range been melted simulta

neously from the foot-hills to the summits, the flanks would have been left almost bare of morainematter, and these noble forests would as yet have had no existence. Numerous groves and thickets would undoubtedly have grown up on lake and avalanche beds, and many a fair flower and shrub would have found food and a dwelling place in weathered nooks and crevices, yet the range as a whole would seem a bare rock desert. The tattered alpine fringe of the present forest, composed of Pinus albicaulis and P. aristata, in many places extends above the upper limit of moraines upon lean, crumbling ledges; but, when they have the opportunity, these little trees show themselves keenly alive to the difference between rich mealy moraine-food and their ordinary meager fare. The yellow pine is also a hardy tree, capable of living on sunshine and snow, but it assembles in forests, and attains noble dimensions only upon nutritious moraines or other soil-beds derived from them; while the sugar-pine and the two silver-firs, which form so important a part of the main forest belt, can hardly maintain life in any form upon bare ledges, no matter what the climate may be.

It appears, therefore, that the Sierra forests in general indicate the extent and positions of the ancient moraines quite as clearly as they do lines of climate. For. forests, properly speaking, cannot exist without soil; and, since the moraines have been deposited upon the solid rock, and only upon elected places, leaving a considerable portion of the old glacial surface bare, we find luxuriant forests of pine and fir abruptly terminated by scored and polished pavements on which not even a moss is growing, though soil alone is required to fit them for the growth of trees two hundred feet in height.

Having thus outlined the forest as a whole, I will now endeavor to sketch the species of which it is composed, excepting the sequoia, which will be presented in a separate chapter.

VOL. XXII.-55.

THE first coniferous tree met by the traveler in ascending the range from the west is the nut-pine, remarkable for its loose, airy, tropical appearance, suggesting a region of palms rather than cool, resiny pine-woods. No one would take it at first sight to be a pine or conifer of any kind, it is so loose in habit, and widely branched, and its foliage is so thin and gray. Fullgrown specimens are from forty to fifty feet in height, and from two to three in diameter. At a height of fifteen or twenty feet from the ground, the trunk usually divides into three or four main branches, about equal in size, which, after bearing away

NUT-PINE (PINUS SABINIANA).

from one another, shoot straight up and form separate summits; while the crooked subordinate branches aspire, or radiate, or droop in loose ornamental sprays. The slender, grayish-green needles are from from eight to twelve inches long, loosely tasseled, and inclined to droop in handsome

curves, contrasting with the stiff, dark-colored trunk and branches in a very striking manner. No other tree of my acquaintance, so substantial in body, is in its foliage so thin and so pervious to the light. The sunbeams sift through even the leafiest trees with scarce any interruption, and the weary, heated traveler finds but little protection in their shade.

It grows only on the torrid foot-hills, seeming to delight in the most ardent sunheat, like a palm; springing up here and there singly, or in scattered groups of five or six, among scrubby white-oaks and thickets of ceanothus and manzanita; its extreme upper limit being about four thousand feet above the sea, its lower about from five hundred to eight hundred feet.

The generous crop of sweet, nutritious nuts which it yields, makes it a great favorite with Indians and with bears. The cones are truly magnificent, measuring from five to eight inches in length, and not much less in thickness, rich chocolate-brown in color, and protected by strong, down-curving hooks which terminate the scales. Nevertheless, the little Douglas squirrel can open them.

Indians gathering the ripe nuts make a striking picture. The men climb the trees like bears and beat off the cones with sticks, or recklessly cut off the more fruitful branches with hatchets, while the squaws gather them in heaps, and roast them until the scales open sufficiently to allow the hard-shelled seeds to be beaten out. Then, in the cool evenings, men, women, and children, with their capacity for dirt greatly

increased by the soft resin with which they are all bedraggled, form circles around their camp-fires on the bank of some stream and lie in easy independence, cracking nuts, and laughing and chatting, as heedless of the future as bears and squirrels.

THE GROVE FORM.

| twelve or fourteen inches in diameter. The cones are about four inches long, exceedingly hard, and covered with a sort of silicious varnish and gum, rendering them impervious to moisture, evidently with a view to the careful preservation of the seeds.

No other conifer in the range is so closely restricted to special localities. It is usually found apart, standing deep in chaparral on sunny hill and cañon sides where there is but little depth of soil, and, where found at all, it is quite plentiful; but the ordinary traveler, following carriageroads and trails, may ascend the range many times without meeting it. While exploring the lower portion of the Merced Cañon I found a lonely miner, seeking his fortune in a quartz vein, on a wild mountain-side planted with this singular tree. told me that he called it the hickory-pine, because of the whiteness and toughness of the wood. It is so little known, however, that it can hardly be said to have a common name. Most mountaineers refer to it as "that queer little pine-tree covered all over with burs." In my studies of this species I find a very interesting and significant group of facts, whose relations will be seen almost as soon as stated.

Pinus tuberculata.

This curious little pine is found at an elevation of from fifteen hundred to three thousand feet, growing in close, willowy groves. It is exceedingly slender and graceful in habit, although trees that chance to stand alone outside the groves sweep forth long, curved branches, producing a striking contrast to the ordinary grove form. The foliage is of the same peculiar gray-green color as that of the nut-pine, and is worn about as loosely, so that the body of the tree is scarce at all obscured by it.

At the age of seven or eight years it begins to bear cones, not on branches, but on the main axis, and, as they never fall off, the trunk is soon very picturesquely dotted with them. The branches also become fruitful after they attain sufficient size. The average size of the older trees is about thirty or forty feet in height, and

He

Ist. All the trees in the groves I examined, however unequal in size, are of the

same age.

2d. Those groves are all planted on dry hill-sides covered with chaparral, and therefore liable to be swept by fire.

3d. There are no seedlings or saplings in or about the living groves, but there is always a fine, hopeful crop springing up on the ground once occupied by any grove that has been destroyed by the burning of the chaparral.

4th. The cones, all of which are persistent through life, never discharge their seeds until the tree or branch to which they belong dies.

A full discussion of the bearing of these facts upon one another would perhaps be out of place here, but I would at least call