C. S. Sargent—The Forests of Central Nevada. 421 
burning Cercocarpus is only {°° of 1 per cent of the dry wood 
consumed, while that of hickory is 8; of 1 per cent, three- 
tenths per cent more. Cercocarpus is probably the only North 
American wood which is heavier than water; and among the 
tropical woods employed in the arts and described by Lastett, 
but six equal or surpass it, the most conspicuous being the 
West Indian Lignum Vite (Guaicum) with a specific gravity 
of 1-248. As was to be expected, the growth of Cercocarpus 
was found to be exceedingly slow. An examination of several 
specimens from one to two hundred years old shows an average 
annual increase of wood only one-sixtieth of an inch in thick- 
Mountain near Eureka, in New York Cafion, at an elevation of 
7,000 feet. It was alow, much branched tree, about twenty feet 
high with a trunk rising six feet to the first branches. At three 
feet from the ground it had a girth of seven feet and five inches. 
If we suppose that its average growth had been as are as 
that of the younger specimens examined, this tree would have 
been 890 years old. It was probably much older. The rate of 
growth of trees is, after a certain age, in inverse ratio to their 
age; and it is perhaps permissible to suppose that the seed 
which produced this little tree had already germinated when 
Two shrubby plants of this regio > mentioned, which, 
from their beauty, are especially worthy of introduction to cul- 
tivation,— Cowani exicana Don., a large ceous shru 
nearly allied to Cercocarpus, with elegant pinnatifidly-lobed 
leaves and large and very abundant yellow flowers; and a 
large shrubby Spirea, S. Millefolium Torr., with the foliage 
of Chamebatia, but a larger and more striking plant, and 
perhaps the most elegant of the genus. oe 
It will have been seen that the forests of Nevada, consisting 
of their remaining wooded to serve as reservoirs of moisture, 
on the existence of which the future of this region must de- 
pend, it would seem wise and not perhaps altogether impracti- 
cable, to check, or at least to regulate, the terrible destruction of 
