THE FORESTS 225 



masses of purple in the spring, and yellow in ripe 

 autumn ; while its acorns are eagerly gathered by 

 Indians, squirrels, and woodpeckers. The Mountain 

 Live Oak (Q. Chrysolepis) is a tough, rugged moun 

 taineer of a tree, growing bravely and attaining 

 noble dimensions on the roughest earthquake tal- 

 uses in deep canons and yosemite valleys. The trunk 

 is usually short, dividing near the ground into great, 

 wide-spreading limbs, and these again into a multi 

 tude of slender sprays, many of them cord-like and 

 drooping to the ground, like those of the Great 

 White Oak of the lowlands (Q. lobata). The top of 

 the tree where there is plenty of space is broad and 

 bossy, with a dense covering of shining leaves, mak 

 ing delightful canopies, the complicated system of 

 gray, interlacing, arching branches as seen from be 

 neath being exceedingly rich and picturesque. No 

 other tree that I know dwarfs so regularly and com 

 pletely as this under changes of climate due to 

 changes in elevation. At the foot of a canon 4000 

 feet above the sea you may find magnificent speci 

 mens of this oak fifty feet high, with craggy, bulg 

 ing trunks, five to seven feet in diameter, and at the 

 head of the canon, 2500 feet higher, a dense, soft, 

 low, shrubby growth of the same species, while all 

 the way up the canon between these extremes of size 

 and habit a perfect gradation may be traced. The 

 largest I have seen was fifty feet high, eight feet in 

 diameter, and about seventy-five feet in spread. 

 The trunk was all knots and buttresses, gray like 

 granite, and about as angular and irregular as the 

 boulders on which it was growing a type of stead 

 fast, unwedgeable strength. 



