178 SUGAR PINES. 



and day by day could not cease to admire it." * 

 These brief details will serve to give some idea of 

 the extraordinary vegetable wealth, the splendour, and 

 enormous size of the trees in the forests of the great 

 North West, and which may undoubtedly be regarded as 

 the finest and most valuable in the world. But these 

 giant trees above mentioned are only a few among 

 many, and by no means exhaust the list of those con- 

 cerning which we should have liked to say a few 

 words," did we not fear to appear too prolix and thus 

 weary the reader. 



For instance, of the tree pines, the pitch pine (Pinus 

 Ponderosd), the singularly lovely Lasiocarpa, and the 

 truly gigantic sugar pine (Pinus Lamb er Hand] which 

 runs up straight as an arrow to quite 300 feet in 

 height, and upon whose edible seeds the forest tribes 

 used to live in the winter time, are notable instances in 

 point the resin of this last named tree is also sometimes 

 used as aJ substitute for sugar, f and hence no doubt the 

 name of sugar pine. There are also an infinite variety 

 of flowering plants and shrubs and beautiful evergreens, 

 such as the arbutus and the evergreen oak, which grow 

 magnificently in California. " I could hardly (says Mr. 

 Barneby) have imagined that evergreen oaks could attain 

 to such magnificent proportions" but the list of vege- 

 table wonders would be indeed singularly incomplete if we 

 omitted to mention two of the greatest of all namely : the 

 giant Sequoias, the largest and noblest of trees these are, 

 the Sequoia Sempervirens, a lofty evergreen known as the 



* Gordon's Pinetum, pp. 207 8. 

 j- Ibid., p. 307. 



Life and Labour in the Far Far West, by W. Henry Barneby, 

 1884, pp. 61, 62. 



