THE FORESTS OF THE YOSE^ITE PARK 109 



silver firs. The park sequoias are restricted to 

 two small groves, a few miles apart, on the Tuol- 

 umne and Merced divide, about seventeen miles 

 from Yosemite Valley. The Big Oak Flat road 

 to the valley runs through the Tuolumne Grove, 

 the Coulterville through the Merced. The more 

 famous and better known Mariposa Grove, be- 

 longing to the state, lies near the southwest cor- 

 ner of the park, a few miles above Wawona. 



The sugar pine (Pinus Lambertiana) is first 

 met in the park in open, sunny, flowery woods, 

 at an elevation of about thirty-five hundred feet 

 above the sea, attains full development at a height 

 between five and six thousand feet, and vanishes 

 at the level of eight thousand feet. In many 

 places, especially on the northern slopes of the 

 main ridges between the rivers, it forms the bulk 

 of the forest, but mostly it is intimately asso- 

 ciated with its noble companions, above which it 

 towers in glorious majesty on every hill, ridge, 

 and plateau from one extremity of the range to 

 the other, a distance of five hundred miles, — 

 the largest, noblest, and most beautiful of all 

 the seventy or eighty species of pine trees in the 

 world, and of all the conifers second only to King 

 Sequoia. 



A good many are from two hundred to two 

 hundred and twenty feet in height, with a dia- 

 meter at four feet from the ground of six to eight 

 feet, and occasionally a grand patriarch, seven or 



