92 KESOUECES OP CALIFOENIA. 



duced on her own soil, and has not been derived from or com- 

 municated to any other district by the course of nature. 



§ 65. Distribution of Plants. — Most of the Sacramento and 

 San Joaquin valleys, the Colorado Desert, the eastern slopes 

 of the Coast Mountains, and the Coast Range south of latitude 

 35°, are treeless ; the Sierra Nevada and the western slopes of 

 the Coast Range north of 35°, have fine forests ; and in the 

 foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada, and in the coast valleys, there 

 are beautiful open groves of oak-trees. The timber of the 

 Sierra is mainly spruce, pine, and fir ; that of the coast, north 

 of 37°, redwood; and spruce and pine south of that latitude. 



§ 66. Superiority of Co7iifers. — The botany of California is 

 remarkable for containing a number of the largest and most 

 beautiful coniferous trees in the world, growing to a height of 

 three hundred feet and a thickness of eight and ten feet in the 

 trunk, and some of them still larger. Among these gigantic 

 olories of the veo-etable kimrdom are the mammoth tree, the 

 redwood, the sugar-pine, the red fir, the yellow fir, and the 

 arbor-vitoe, or IViuja gigantea. Other large conifers contrib- 

 ute to the magnificence of our forests. We have the laurel, 

 the madrofia, the evergreen-oak, and the nut-pine (Pinus sa- 

 bifdcma)^ evergreen trees with a growth resembling that of 

 deciduous trees. Our deciduous trees are few, and of little 

 value to the mechanic. 



The mammoth tree [Sequoia gigantea) wa5 described in the 

 preceding chapter. 



§ 67. Redwood. — The redwood {Sequoia sempervirens) is 

 the second in size and the first in commercial value of all the 

 trees in California, though not much superior to the sugar-pine 

 in either respect. It grows only within thirty miles of the 

 ocean from Monterey to Crescent City, and is never found out 

 of the state. It bears a remarkable resemblance in color and 

 texture of wood and bark, and color, form and distribution of 

 foliage to the mammoth tree, to which it is not much inferior in 

 size. A redwood-tree called " Fremont's tree," in Santa Cruz 

 county, is two hundred and seventy-five feet high, and nineteen 



