^m TREES 



altitudes, fringing upland meadows, watered by glaciers, 

 with groves of the most exquisite beauty. The sweeping, 

 downward-drooping branches, clothed with abundant pea- 

 green foliage, silver-lined, resist wind storms and snow 

 burdens by the wonderful pliancy of their fibres. In early 

 autumn the trees are bent over so as to form arches. 

 Young forests are thus buried out of sight for six months of 

 the year. With the melting of the snow they right them- 

 selves gradually, and among the new leaves appear the 

 flowers, dark purple cones and staminate star-flowers, 

 blue as forget-me-nots. Three-angied leaves, whorled 

 on the twig, and cones two to three inches long, set this 

 hemlock apart from its related species, but the leaf -stalk 

 settles once for all the question of its family name. 



THE SEQUOIAS 



Nowhere else in the world are conifers found in such ex- 

 tensive forests and in such superlative vigor and stu- 

 pendous size as in the states that border the Pacific Ocean. 

 California is particularly the paradise of the conifers. All 

 of the species that make the forests of the Northwest the 

 wonder of travelers and the pride of the states are found in 

 equally prodigal size and extent in California. To these 

 forests are added groves of sequoias — the Big Tree and the 

 redwood, the former found nowhere outside of California, 

 the latter reaching into Oregon. 



Once the sequoias had a wide distribution in the Old 

 and the New World. With magnohas and many other lux- 

 uriant trees found in warm climates, five species of sequoia 

 extended over the North Temperate zone in both hemi- 



