conifers. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 53 



at elevations of about six thousand feet above the sea, a broad belt below the forests of Funis ponderosa 

 and above that occupied by small trees of Finus edulis. 



The wood of Finus monophylla is light, soft, weak and brittle, and close-grained ; it is yellow or 

 light brown, with thick nearly white sapwood, and contains thin inconspicuous bands of small summer 

 cells, a few resin passages, and numerous obscure medullary rays. The specific gravity of the 

 absolutely dry wood is 0.5658, a cubic foot weighing 35.26 pounds. 1 It is largely used for fuel, 

 furnishing the best wood 2 produced in the Great Basin for the manufacture of charcoal used in 

 smelting. 



The seeds supply an important article of food to the Paiutes, Shoshones, Panamints, and other 

 desert Indians, who gather the cones in the autumn, and, heating them slightly to open the scales, pick 

 out the seeds, which they store for winter use, eating them raw or roasted or pounding them into coarse 

 flour. 3 



Pinus monophylla was discovered by Fremont near the Cajon Pass in southern California on 

 April 18, 1844. 4 It is said to have been introduced into European gardens in 1847, and is occasionally 

 cidtivated in Europe and in the eastern United States, where it is hardy as far north, at least, as eastern 

 Massachusetts. In cultivation, however, Pinus monophylla grows very slowly, and it is more valuable 

 in gardens as a botanical curiosity than as an ornament. 



1 Pinus monophylla usually grows slowly. A specimen of the 2 Pinus monophylla perhaps grows to its largest size on Mt. 



wood of a tree grown in central Nevada, which I examined in 1878, Magruder, a high peak in Nevada northeast of Owen's Lake and 



was five and a half inches in diameter and contained one hundred not far from the boundary line of California, • vhere it forms a lux- 



and thirteen layers of annual growth. (See Am. Jour. Sci. ser. 3, uriant forest of trees forty or fifty feet in height, which is a favorite 



xvii. 419 [The Forests of Central Nevada].) The log specimen, resort of Indians, who assemble there to gather the abundant crops 



however, in the Jesup Collection of North American Woods in the of seeds. (See Merriam, North American Fauna, No. 7, 337 [Death 



American Museum of Natural History, New York, brought from the Valley Exped. ii.].) 



same locality, is thirteen inches in diameter inside the bark and only G Palmer, Am. Nat. xii. 594. — Deutcher, American Anthropolo- 



one hundred and seventy-eight years old, with sapwood which is gist, vi. 377 (Pinon-gathering among the Panamint Indians). 



two and seven eighths inches thick and contains fifty-nine layers. 4 Fremont, Rep. 258. 



