CONE-BEARERS. Sq 



4 



other soft-scaled pines and the spruces. And the 

 enormous hooks of their cones, do they not defend 

 against the attacks of nut-hunting squirrels, which 

 else might abridge the dissemination, if not compass 

 the extinction, of the race? 



The Closed- Cone, Slender Pines 



Are the aggressive, conservative, self-sacrificing, but 

 surely propagating group of the wonderful Pine fam- 

 ily. They are strategical warriors from antiquity. 

 Obstreperous and tenacious, they intrude upon coveted 

 ground and multiply upon it so numerously that 

 they starve out all other trees and are obliged to 

 stand close together, crowding and fighting, content 

 to be squeezed to slim saplings if only they succeed 

 in lifting but a scant spire of foliage to the sunlight 

 , and the wind-gust, in order to elaborate sap enough 

 to bring to perfection their many belts of suspended, 

 wonderful, wooden, sculptured seed-caskets of long- 

 preserved life-germs, to reforest the region upon occa- 

 sion. 



The Pendent- Coned Trees The Spruces 



Are the cosmopolitan frequenters and benefactors of 

 any region wherever graceful forms are required to 

 relieve a landscape from monotony or ugliness; be 

 it the broad intervales of the great Northwest forests, 

 or the otherwise drear summit valleys of surrounding 

 mountains. Rising gracefully from the general earth- 



