p. COULTERI AND SABINIANA 37 



lustre to the various ceremonies in their turn of 

 revelry or solemnity. 



P. COULTERI AND SaBINIANA. 



So they gathered cones together. 

 Gathered seed cones of the pine tree, 

 Gathered blue cones of the fir tree . . , 



There they stood all armed and waiting, 

 Hurled the pine cones down upon him. 



Longfellow. 



This is how we are told in the Song of Hiawatha 

 that the mischievous Puk-Wudjies, they " the envious 

 little people," did to death mighty Kwasind, the strong 

 man of the Red Indian legend. 



In this affray it must have been the heavy cones 

 of some such Pines as these that scored, and did the 

 work of siege guns upon the sleeping head of the 

 ill-fated giant of champion renown, and of whom it 

 was boasted " no man dared to strive with," and 

 " no one could compete with." A " blue cone of 

 the fir tree," hurled, to him would have been but a 

 popgun affair, and as an assault by a wasp on a brick 

 wall. 



On paper there seem a very few^ points of difference 

 between these two Conifers — P. Coulteri and Sabini- 

 ana — beyond the shape of their both gigantic cones, 

 yet in its native land the P. Sabiniana is accounted 

 as of a marked unmistakable appearance. 



P. Sabiniana. — In a country of luxuriantly foliaged 

 trees (California), it alone is sparsely attired w^ith leaf 

 decoration. In a country of towering Pines, it alone 

 is many-stemmed, straggly, and bushlike. In a 

 country of rich and dark-green foliage, it alone wears 

 leaves of palest hue. For these characteristics it has 

 been accredited w^ith a remotest Pine ancestry, and 

 looked upon by some as hastily nearing that decadent 



