A WIND-STOKM IN THE FORESTS 247 



in united strength. The Yellow or Silver Pine is 

 more frequently overturned than any other tree on 

 the Sierra, because its leaves and branches form 

 a larger mass in proportion to its height, while 

 in many places it is planted sparsely, leaving open 

 lanes through which storms may enter with full 

 force. Furthermore, because it is distributed along 

 the lower portion of the range, which was the first 

 to be left bare on the breaking up of the ice-sheet 

 at the close of the glacial winter, the soil it is grow 

 ing upon has been longer exposed to post-glacial 

 weathering, and consequently is in a more crumb 

 ling, decayed condition than the fresher soils 

 farther up the range, and therefore offers a less 

 secure anchorage for the roots. 



While exploring the forest zones of Mount 

 Shasta, I discovered the path of a hurricane 

 strewn with thousands of pines of this species. 

 Great and small had been uprooted or wrenched 

 off by sheer force, making a clean gap, like that 

 made by a snow avalanche. But hurricanes capa 

 ble of doing this class of work are rare in the 

 Sierra, and when we have explored the forests 

 from one extremity of the range to the other, we 

 are compelled to believe that they are the most 

 beautiful on the face of the earth, however we may 

 regard the agents that have made them so. 



There is always something deeply exciting, not 

 only in the sounds of winds in the woods, which exert 

 more or less influence over every mind, but in their 

 varied wateiiike flow as manifested by the move 

 ments of the trees, especially those of the conifers. 

 By no other trees are they rendered so extensively 



