HEAVY YELLOW pirn. 51 



HEAVY YELLOW PINE. 



(Pinus ponderosa.) 



"There is a quiet poetic spirit here, amid 

 The silent majesty of these deep woods — 

 Its presence shall uplift thy thoughts from earth. 

 As to the sunshin* and the pure bright air, 

 Their tops — the green trees lift." — Longfellow. 



THE Yellow Ponderous Pine of California and Oregon 

 covers vast areas of several thousands of miles in extent, 

 from beyond the Columbia River to Mexico, and from 

 Coast Range to Sierra Mountains, with the most magnificent 

 forests, not only mixed with other pines, firs, spruces, and 

 varied arborea, but still maintaining its prevailing character ; 

 it also often becomes the only species the traveler may meet 

 for days together, especially in the arid and burning interior 

 valleys and basins : and even here it is often a large tree, i. e. 

 over one hundred feet high, suffering somewhat in the char- 

 acter of the lumber which then becomes softer, lighter, and 

 is greatly given to an ungainly warping propensity that 

 seems simply ridiculous, when posing to such extremes. 

 Like most other trees, the quality of the timber is exceed- 

 ingly variable, according to soils and surroundings. To 

 illustrate and confirm this remark, we will state that a dwarf 

 variety, or rather subvariety of Jejfreyi, in Owen's Valley, at 

 " Casa Diablo," bearing cones, barely one half the usual size, 

 within reach from the ground — the full grown trees but little 

 higher than one's head — with glaucous sour foliage, of the 

 taste of common rhubarb or sorrel. At first view, we took 

 this remarkable example to be a new species of pine, but 

 upon more close and careful examination, although growing 

 upon exactly the same level and within a few stone-throws 

 of typical trees over a hundred feet high, yet this dwarfed 

 character seemed evidently due to the soil in which this 

 particular group grew, being a saline deposit from a hot 

 spring, forming a little knoll whence the mineral waters had 

 receded in course of formation. 



The ever increasing import of all our varied Pacific obser- 

 vations tends to impress upon us the vast significance of 

 foundation soil — as to accelerative or depressive, qualitative 

 or quantitative, and other influences, upon arboration, or the 

 lesser and more general vegetation — many fingered facts 

 point continually to the ultimate mineral and moraine as 

 their great guiding genius ; so the lesser mineral flows to the 



