58 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



hundred feet of the sheltered Coast Range, rising the east of 

 Sacramento Valley towards the Sierras, to four hundred feet 

 as the lowest limit, from thence it reaches two thousand five 

 hundred feet altitude, or even more, of our snow mountains,, 

 and on the cold exposed coast mountains of St. Lucia about 

 the same. According to Hon. B. B. Redding's careful and 

 exceedingly useful Sacramento Valley observations, this pine 

 is not at a higher elevation than that in which the tempera- 

 ture is the same as that of the valley in the same latitude, 

 but it also indicates increased rainfall in these contiguous 

 homolatitudinal valleys, hence plants, crops, trees, fruits,, 

 etc., growing in the valleys can alike be successfully grown 

 on these foot-hills, due shelter and aspect given, with the 

 additional advantage of purer air, more equable, drier, and 

 healthier; free from fogs that retard if not preclude the 

 ripening process, discoloring almonds, nuts, and other fruits 

 they do not sour and utterly spoil, as peaches, grapes, and 

 all Autumnal fruits, together with the genus homo; and the 

 further advantages of sweeter and more wholesome water, 

 better drainage, longer ripening season on account of later 

 frosts and more gradual "closing-in" season, by the coopera- 

 tion of earlier droughts; and when the growing season is 

 closed, more perfect rest — consequently fruits of richer qual- 

 ity, etc. And even the frosts and snows that do occasionally 

 occur here — lay their soft and downy mantle so quietly over 

 the vernal ardor that ever broods over these semi-tropical 

 little hills — that they are only lovingly chastened and with- 

 held from the premature exposure of these sentinels and 

 harbingers that patiently await the earnest call of Spring. 

 Thus invigorated for intenser reaction, at length they go 

 speedily on, prospering and to prosper, until they win the 

 final goal of "Autumn's farewell smile" — the best, the richest 

 garnered fruits of the Pacific. 



This Largest Nut Pine and Digger Pine, as it is also called, 

 we have seen to be a tree of unique beauty, expressiveness, 

 and manifold uses, as in some sense suggested, with bark of 

 body and branches also of similar leaden gray, and mode- 

 rately even ; but if this gossamery gray-green cerulean almost 

 smoky Indian-Summer sort of haze foliage is to be designated 

 " a compact mass of deep-green verdure," why then one might 

 as well close the eyes — their occupation's gone — observations, 

 like oracles, silent, and classic responses forever dumb. Nor 

 let it ever be presumed that a thousandth part of the know- 

 ledge, significance, and use of this pine, or any other subject 

 or object in nature is entirely understood. The word " ex- 

 haustive" belongs nowhere in the vocabulary of God's works,, 

 and is ever abhorred by the wise ; such expressions belong 

 to the lip of the viper of the tree of science — never to the: 

 tongue of the true man. 



