92 RESOUKCES OF CALIF O UN I A. 



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 line 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 Conifers. — 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 eisfht and ten feet in the 

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

 glories of the vegetable kingdom are the mammoth tree, the 

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

 arbor-vitse, or Thuja gigantea. Other large conifers contrib- 

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

 the madroiia, the evergreen-oak, and the nut-pine {Piiius sa- 

 hiniana^^ 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 seinpervirens) 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 respects. 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 



