8 A bin's gray pine. 55 



SABIN'S GRAY PINE. 



(Pinus Sabiniana.) 



" Pine trees waft through its chambers, 

 The odorous breath of their branches." 



— Longfellow. 



THIS medium sized, soft, sea-green, light, and airy pine, 

 is the first seen as we approach the highlands, which, 

 like a hlue sylvan mist, sports itself here and there 

 over the foothills in a manner so eminently pleasing to the 

 eye. Being a first class foreground tree, where else should ifc 

 be found so appropriately as on the foreground, or middle 

 landscape, as we ascend the Sierra Nevada Mountains? and, 

 if allowed to say it, we never behold her soft celestial wings 

 without a genial glow of heart that, as it were, clasps the 

 chaste charmer to our bosom — and why not? Is there the 

 remotest semblance of prudish precision in the expression of 

 this tree? Nay, but the whole air of it is as free, easy, and 

 artless as any other child of nature, with only just enough of 

 the erratic for grace and variety's sake, for the body is never, 

 or rarely ever strict, but will swerve a little below, and must 

 needs fork more or less variously above ; usually dividing 

 into two or more main, erect branches, that serve to divide 

 if not dissipate any leading responsibility of head ; and, as 

 to timber body, there is not often much to speak of, therefore 

 doth it spread and become gently open, and is not only of 

 light gray-green hue, but loose and gauzy-foliaged, with long- 

 haired leaves quite gossamery, like a lady's veil, that scarcely 

 hides the beauty beyond, but lends distance to enchantment 

 and relief to perspective. Still, lest the expression be alto- 

 gether too light and too gauzy, the great cones are dark and 

 striking objects, hung out in mid-air ! speciously as big birds 

 among the branches, or, recalling the allusion, they give it 

 decided tone and character. Let us dwell a moment on 

 these great cones — unequaled in the world at large, and only 

 a little surpassed by the monster Coulter pine cone of the 

 coast at home — eight or nine inches long by seven or eight 

 inches in diameter. This alone is enough to excite the won- 

 der of the native observer and astonish the stranger, and yet 

 they are often in clusters of from three to five. 



This particular nut-pine — for there are more than half a 

 dozen others — can only be considered a tree of low or middle- 

 sized stature, say about forty to sixty feet high, average 

 diameter two or more feet — rarely a few seventy-five to one 



