44 FOREST TREP:S OF CALIFORNIA. 



shadow ; the grouse, the squirrel, the jay and their like, find a 

 constant home in the more darkened head — genial tent-house 

 when storm and tempest roar, secure hiding place from 

 alarm and danger, and ever present night retreat to hosts 

 unnumbered, with the sweetest songsters of the grove. 



To dwell on the vast and varied uses at length would carry 

 us too far in detail — a final word on the California form, its 

 timber products, economic, and few other uses must suffice. 

 Contrary to experience and observation relative to most 

 other timbers, the old matured heart-wood is more perishable 

 than the young and sappy'poles and branches where they 

 are exposed to the seasons — perhaps because less interstitial 

 separation of annual growths or "shaky" texture with such 

 ready absorption and retention of water, etc. — hence its 

 almost sole devotion to internal work, securely sheltered 

 from alternate storms and burning suns; for rude rafters, etc., 

 duly seasoned with the bark on, they are singularly lasting 

 and very elastic, with much of the snap and spring of the 

 yew and cedar, combined with a due degree of strength. 



Only in the coast forests of California, contiguous to rivers 

 or cold creek banks at the southern limit of its growth, is the 

 Pacific Hemlock Spruce ever found much over two feet in 

 diameter and about sixty or eighty feet high. Up to extreme 

 age it preserves the perfect symmetrical spire-form, and is 

 altogether less marred by unsightly dead limbs, than its 

 kindred of the East — the same observation applies to Alaska. 

 Perhaps if this tree in our forests, or cultivated in this clime, 

 were more exposed, a somewhat broader conic style would 

 supervene; however, in its native haunts the horizontal, 

 open, and airy branches, subdivided branch lets, and final 

 feathery sprays have the utmost strictly two-rowed leafy 

 plan, the tiny line-leaves about half shorter — certainly the 

 most delicately gauzy, chaste, and beautiful tree it is possible 

 to imagine. In the young state, say from ten to forty feet 

 high or more, the bark is relatively smooth and even, 

 branches exactly level, thin, fan-like, long and slender, with 

 cherry-brown bark. These free hearted boughs from the 

 breast, are wont to lose entirely the peaked Italian brigand- 

 hat or Alpine style so common elsewhere, not even pending 

 like tassels at the tips save when in young spring time, but 

 toss their entire limbs as lightly and freely to the breeze as 

 the wild deer leaps on the mountains; or, astirred by the 

 gentler zephyr off some sun-set shore, vibrating the softest 

 silvery emerald sheen, like a celestial thrill, close along the 

 confines of the invisible, or dimly seen, so ennerved are the 

 tiny leaves of this tree of our earthly paradise that no artistic 

 grace of pencil, or power of pen, can express the charm of 

 every exquisite form and enlivened motion, even to the very 



