STEEP TRAILS 



are sometimes nearly forty feet lonp;, feathered 

 richly all jxround with short, leafy branchlets, 

 and tasselled with cones a foot and a half long. 

 And when these superb arms are outspread, 

 radiating in every direction, an immense crown- 

 like mass is formed which, poised on the no- 

 ble shaft and filled with sunshine, is one of 

 the grimdest forest objects conceivable. But 

 though so wild and unconventional when full- 

 grown, the sugar pine is a remarkably regular 

 tree in youth, a strict follower of coniferous 

 fashions, slim, erect, tapering, symmetrical, 

 every branch in place. At the age of fifty or 

 sixty years this shy, fashionable form begins 

 to give way. Special branches are tlu-ust out 

 away from the general outlines of the trees 

 and bent down with cones. Henceforth it be- 

 comes more and more original and indepen- 

 dent in style, pushes boldly aloft into the 

 winds and sunshine, growing ever more stately 

 and beautiful, a joy and inspiration to every 

 beholder. 



Unfortunately, the sugar pine makes excel- 

 lent lumber. It is too good to live, and is 

 already passing rapidly away before the wood- 

 man's axe. Surely out of all of the abound- 

 ing forest-wealth of Oregon a few specimens 

 might be spared to the world, not as dead 

 lumber, but as living trees. A park of moderate 

 306 



