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A. Gray—Forest Geography and Archeology. 91 
Finally, as concerns the west coast, the lack of summer rain is 
made up by the moisture-laden ocean winds, which regularly 
every summer afternoon wrap the coast-ranges of mountains, 
which these forests affect, with mist and fog. e Redwood, 
one of the two California big trees,—the handsomest and far 
the most abundant and useful,—is restricted to these coast- 
ranges, bathed with soft showers fresh from the ocean all win- 
ter, and with fogs and moist ocean air all summer. It is 
nowhere found beyond the reach of these fogs. South of 
Monterey, where this summer condensation lessens, and winter 
rains become precarious, the Redwoods disappear, and the gen- 
eral forest becomes restricted to favorable stations on mountain 
sides and summits...... The whole coast is bordered by a 
line of mountains, which condense the moisture of the sea-breezes 
upon their cool slopes and summits. These winds, continuing 
eastward, descend dry into the valleys, and warming as they 
descend, take up moisture instead of dropping any. 
valleys, when broad, are sparsely wooded or woodless, except 
at the north, where summer-rain is not very rare. 
Beyond stretches the Sierra Nevada, all rainless in summer, 
except local hail-storms and snow-falls on its higher crests and 
eaks. Yet its flanks are forest-clad ; and, between the levels of 
3,000 and 9,000 feet, they bear an ample growth of the largest 
coniferous trees known. In favored spots of this forest—and only 
there—are found those groves of the giant uoia, near kin 
of the Redwood of the coast-ranges, whose trunks are from 
fifty to ninety feet in circumference, and height from two 
hundred to three hundred and twenty-five feet. And in reach- 
ing these wondrous trees you ride through miles of sugar-pines, 
yellow pines, spruces and firs, of such magnificence in girth and 
height, that the big trees, when reached—astonishing as they 
are—seem not out of keeping with their surroundings. ; 
I cannot pretend to account for the extreme magnificence of 
this sierra-forest. Its rain-fall is in winter, and of unknown 
but large amount. Doubtless most of it is in snow, of whic 
fifty or sixty feet falls in some winters; and—different from 
the coast and in Oregon, where it falls as rain, and at a tem- 
perature which does not suspend vegetable action,—here the 
winter must be complete cessation. But with such great snow- 
~ the supply of moisture to the soil should be abundant and 
asting. 
Then the Sierra—much loftier than the coast ranges—rising 
from 7,000 or 8,000 to 11,000 and 14,000 feet—is refreshed in 
Summer by the winds from the Pacific, from which it takesthe __ 
last drops of available moisture; and mountains of such alti- 
tude, to which moisture from whatever source or direction 
must necessarily be attracted, are always expected to support 
