THE PINE SUB-FAMILY. 



125 



the slopes, where the other pines become mere stunted 

 shrubs. 



"We make the following extracts from Dr. Engelmann's 

 paper in the Transactions of the St. Louis Academy of 

 Sciences : " On alpine heights, between 9,200 and 11,800 or 

 12,000 feet high, on Pike's Peak and the high mountains of 

 the Snowy Range, Dr. Parry, 1861 and 1862, Messrs. Hall 

 and Harbour, 1862. Also 

 on the heights of the Cooche- 

 topa Pass, nearly south-west 

 of Pike's Peak, (altitude 

 over 10,000 feet,) where 

 Captain Gunnison discover- 

 ed, in 1853, what seems to 

 be this species without fruit, 

 (see Pacific R. R. Rep., II., 

 p. 130) ; the leaves which I 

 could compare are those of 

 our plant. Flowers end of 

 June and beginning of July. 

 Flourishing best in the 



Fig. 16. PINUS AKISTATA. 



higher elevations, and never 

 descendingjbelow 9,000 feet, 

 in its lower ranges not ripening its fruits as well as on the 

 bleak heights ; this truly alpine species in this respect 

 our representative of the European P. pumilis character- 

 izes the highest belt of timber on the peaks of Colorado. 

 On sheltered slopes a tree 40 or 50 feet high and from 1 

 to 2 feet in diameter, it becomes a straggling bush, 

 prostrate, and almost creeping, on the bleak summits of 

 the high ridges." 



In allusion to its apparently very slow growth, Doctor 

 Engelmann says : " Its growth, at least in the latter local- 

 ities, is exceedingly slow, as a stick of scarcely more than 

 one inch in diameter, brought back by Dr. Parry, shows 

 nearly fifty annual rings, some of them ^ of a line, and 



