18 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



The wild red man of the wood is quick to perceive and apt 

 to apply this and similar knowledge to the science of his 

 own use, for no sooner does the harvest of the coveted pifwn 

 arrive, than ape-like, he climbs and clambers out astride the 

 branch, and, teetering to the required sway, when, with a 

 short timely jerk, the heavy cones are snapped off. The 

 great use of the seed as Indian food we omit. 



The rich dark plumes of vigorous blue-green foliage very 

 much resemble the beautiful White Pine of the East (P. 

 strobus), especially when young — at length all further resem- 

 blance of form ceases. The needle-like leaf-straws are rather 

 short, and somewhat twisted in age, from three to five inches 

 long, very finely toothed on their edges, five in each tiny 

 bootee, which at length is shed off like the White Pine ; these 

 little bundles, in most cone-bearers, are more manifestly 

 inserted in spiral order around the ultimate twigs. 



The timber is not quite so soft, light, and white as the 

 White Pine itself, but closely resembles it, and is alike in 

 use and value, and, in some respects, superior, as it combines 

 greater strength with elasticity. 



Where the surface is burned the oozing sap concretes into 

 a white manna-like sugar, sometimes nearly as crystaline 

 and pure as refined loaf sugar, very sweet, with scarcely an 

 appreciable pine-resin flavor — hence the common name 

 Sugar Pine. If this could be obtained in quantity, its laxa- 

 tive and balsamic properties, apart from the palatable and 

 nutritive, would highly commend itself to the attention of 

 the medical profession. For obvious reasons, we cannot 

 here, in all freedom, urge upon the public or the landscape 

 artist the full claims of this expressive tree — to the bald 

 scientific, or the mere lucre-loving plod, any aesthetic estima- 

 tion of arboreal nature whatever might be deemed too poetic, 

 imaginative, discursive, fanciful, or what not ; briefly, irrele- 

 vant to the subject in hand. And what if we own no prop- 

 erty in that royal realm, why shouldn't we be indifferent ? 

 And even our aversion may be suppressed. Is it not one of 

 those occasions for tolerance, and charity, and all the 

 renowned and universal virtues among men? With due 

 deference, therefore, to these varied tastes — always to be 

 anticipated — we frankly confess our great surprise that even 

 some few are found disparaging this noble pine on account 

 of its open-hearted port, nor in our fascinated simplicity did 

 it ever occur that the lack of leafage was a defect in this 

 unique type of- trees, being in no way amenable to any gross, 

 massive, or tumuloid standard of judgment: set it down, 

 then, to our fault, that we have no preconceived, abstract, 

 and arbitrary notion of propriety for all the trees! — that we 

 do not even bow down and worship the almighty Scissor* ! ! 

 Perchance the peculiar charms of this tree in our eye, may, 



