52 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



lasts and leasts, sereal and ethereal ; a thousand witnesses 

 rapidly multiplying, crowd to the front, and clamor for recog- 

 nition and application to human use, or to use and to hu- 

 manity. The artificial dwarfing of trees by the Japanese — a 

 former mystery, now generally known— practised by myself 

 when a boy, viz: by the layering principles modifiedly 

 applied, from upon trees already very old, by partially and 

 successively continuing to belt or girdle a twig while the 

 limb is wound round by turf or moss with a suspended water 

 drip until it strikes radicles, and then cut off and potted or 

 planted. This pine, from one to three hundred feet high, 

 and from three to eight feet in diameter, is, for nobility of 

 port and lofty beauty, in the eye of the cultivated stranger, 

 possessed of unusual interest; the finest forests are but little 

 removed from the great sequoias themselves ; this compara- 

 tive contrast is most vividly brought home to one's conscious- 

 ness by their often skirting, and as it were, guarding the 

 regions round about them ; nor is it always their grandeur 

 alone that so impresses, for to be duly appreciated we must 

 enter into the spirit of the tree itself, in various ways ; must 

 catch the silvery thrill that so nervously and finely trills 

 over the long radiating tufts of steely needles that tip and 

 aspergil the older beady-scarred boughs ; and then there are 

 those large long plumes of younger spire-topped trees, which 

 are altogether alive to one who 



" Loves the wind among the branches." 



Though the palisaded pine trees — ever sighing — ever sigh- 

 ing as they softly gleam o'er the landscape, tinted, too, with 

 the most delicate possible tinge of golden-green that glim- 

 mers a softer sheen over the sunlit hair — these coma almost 

 hiding the clustered cones that tip the final twigs. The bark 

 is peculiarly striking, of bright yellowish-brown, and of 1am- 

 ellated soft corky character and color, its surface laid off in 

 large, flat, smooth plates, from four to ten inches long or so, 

 one third to one half less broad ; these oblong divisions, for 

 the most part, follow the law of cell forms and forces com- 

 bined, bounding the chinky water-lines, the leading chan- 

 nels of which are somewhat deepened below. The ease with 

 which jaybirds and woodpeckers honeycomb their thimble- 

 sized holes and drive in their winter supply of acorns, point 

 or germ end foremost, renders the bark of these pines the 

 preferred repositories; even bushels of acorns are sometimes 

 seen so stored in a single tree. As the germ end is thus kept 

 dry, and by pressure quite prevented from swelling, it cannot 

 germinate, although some species are so prone to sprout they 

 scarce wait until the fall to the ground and never long after — 

 a hint to the wise is sufficient. 



