THE FORESTS OF THE YOSEMITE PARK 115 



Being able to endure fire and hunger and 

 many climates this grand tree is widely distribu- 

 ted : eastward from the coast across the broad 

 Rocky Mountain ranges to the Black Hills of 

 Dakota, a distance of more than a thousand 

 miles, and southward from British Columbia, 

 near latitude 51°, to Mexico, about fifteen hun- 

 dred miles. South of the Columbia River it 

 meets the sugar pine, and accompanies it all the 

 way down along the Coast and Cascade moun- 

 tains and the Sierra and southern ranges to the 

 mountains of the peninsula of Lower California, 

 where they find their southmost homes together. 

 Pinus ponderosa is extremely variable, and much 

 bother it gives botanists who try to catch and 

 confine the unmanageable proteus in two or a 

 dozen species, — Jeffreyi, deflexa, Apacheca lati- 

 folia, etc. But in all its wanderings, in every 

 form, it manifests noble strength. Clad in thick 

 bark like a warrior in mail, it extends its bright 

 ranks over all the high ranges of the wild side 

 of the continent : flourishes in the drenching 

 fog and rain of the northern coast at the level 

 of the sea, in the snow-laden blasts of the moun- 

 tains, and the white glaring sunshine of the 

 interior plateaus and plains, on the borders of 

 mirage-haunted deserts, volcanoes, and lava beds, 

 waving its bright plumes in the hot winds un- 

 daunted, blooming every year for centuries, and 

 tossing big ripe cones among the cinders and 

 ashes of nature's hearths. 



