FOREST GEOGRAPHY AND ARCHZOLOGY. 211 
ter. And the great Pacific Gulf-stream sweeps toward and 
along the coast, instead of bearing away from it, as on our 
Atlantic side. 
The winters are mild and short, and are to a great extent a 
season of growth, instead of suspension of growth as with us. 
So there is a far longer season available to tree vegetation 
than with us, during all of which trees may either grow or 
accumulate the materials for growth. On our side of the 
continent and in this latitude, trees use the whole autumn in 
getting ready for a six-months winter, which is completely 
lost time. 
Finally, as concerns the west coast, the lack of summer rain 
is made up by the moisture-laden ocean winds, which regularly 
every summer afternoon wrap the coast-ranges of mountains, 
which these forests affect, with mist and fog. The Redwood, 
one of the two California Big Trees, —the handsomest and 
far the most abundant and useful, — is restricted to these 
coast ranges, bathed with soft showers fresh from the ocean 
all winter, and with fogs and moist ocean air all summer. It 
is nowhere found beyond the reach of these fogs. South of 
Monterey, where this summer condensation lessens, and winter 
rains become precarious, the Redwoods disappear, and the gen- 
eral forest becomes restricted to favorable stations on moun- 
tain sides and summits. . . . The whole coast is bordered by 
a line of mountains, which condense the moisture of the sea- 
breezes upon their cool slopes and summits. These winds, 
continuing eastward, descend dry into the valleys, and warm- 
ing as they descend, take up moisture instead of dropping 
any. These valleys, when broad, are sparsely wooded or wood- 
less, except at the north, where summer rain is not very rare. 
Beyond stretches the Sierra Nevada, all rainless in summer, 
except local hail-storms and snowfalls on its higher crests and 
peaks. Yet its flanks are forest-clad; and, between the levels 
of 3000 and 9000 feet, they bear an ample growth of the lar- 
gest coniferous trees known. In favored spots of this forest, 
and only there, are found those groves of the giant Sequoia, 
near kin of the Redwood of the coast ranges, whose trunks are 
from fifty to ninety feet in circumference, and whose height is 
