The Inheritance 17 
While in the cafions of Southern California 
there is a beautiful sycamore and an alder 
which, unlike the Eastern, becomes a large tree, 
and in some localities there is a white oak, 
it is, above all, the live oak along the coast 
and in the valleys which will give you your 
tree-impressions and which will be to you 
the tree of trees. In the high Sierra, on the 
other hand, one has little or no association 
with hardwoods and it is the great coniferous 
forest of cedar, fir, and pine, and of Sequoia 
in restricted areas, a forest having no counter- 
part east of the Cascade,—vast, open, and 
majestic,—which is the essential character- 
istic of our wild garden. In the arid South- 
West, except at high elevations adapted to 
conifers, the cottonwood of the dry creek beds 
is the all-important tree; unless indeed we 
consider the giant cactus of Arizona a tree— 
which it properly is—but a tree so peculiar 
and so remote from one’s idea of trees, that it 
accords us impressions of a wholly different 
character. 
Differences in mammalian fauna of East 
and West, while equally great, are much less 
striking for the simple reason that we see as a 
tule very little of wild animals. They live 
by concealment or by their wits; they are 
2 
