212 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



him in honor of John Torrey, the distinguished co- 

 worker with Dr. Asa Gray in the virgin fields of 

 American botany. It is a small tree, with little that 

 is noteworthy to commend it to the non-botanical ex- 

 cept possibly its rather squat cones which evince 

 great reluctance to leave the limb, persisting there 

 for four or five years ; and when they finally do drop, 

 they leave the basal part affixed to the tree. The 

 mainland locality occupied by the Torrey pine is ex- 

 ceedingly picturesque and wild on seaward-looking 

 hills, with flowery, sunny canons and arroyos open- 

 ing to the Pacific. A public road runs through the 

 midst of the scattered trees, but otherwise they are 

 quite removed from public haunt, offering a rare 

 tavern of the open to picnickers and those contem- 

 plative souls who love that happy combination of 

 the shade of a tree and the long, long vistas of the 

 sea. 



The presence of these three groups of rare trees 

 gathered on three little scraps of territory along the 

 ocean's marge, like passengers huddled here and 

 there on the deck of a sinking ship, is a striking fact 

 that has given rise to much speculation. Are they 

 the last of a vanishing race or the forbears of a 

 coming one? Why are they here and nowhere else 

 in the world? One, though, does occur on an island 

 a hundred and fifty miles away ; and by way of sup- 



