MONTEREY PINE. 61 



alone to nature, where stock is excluded, have given very 

 nearly like results. No other pine, native or foreign, shows 

 greater vigor here ; in short, instances are too numerous and 

 notable to need lengthy confirmation, and few in early age 

 exceed the symmetry and dense sheltering qualities of the 

 Monterey Pine. 



Their value for these purposes as forestal woods contiguous 

 to, and especially to the windward of orange, olive, and vine- 

 yards, or orchards of every kind, is too well known, however 

 little appreciated. This tree, like many others, although 

 bending to the lea, under persistent and powerful northwest 

 winds, a short lull is sufficient for it to right up and pursue 

 its natural bent. From branching close to the ground for a 

 decade or two, or after the early and middle period of growth, 

 then later on in age, it is wont to relinquish the first rela- 

 tively long and strong arms of juvenile contest below to its 

 juniors and their companions, the Knobby Pine, etc., and 

 thenceforward aspire to a higher destiny in the heavens — 

 donning the picturesque in pose — challenging the elevated 

 bufietings of the elements up in the blue; for this tree, it 

 should be noted, attains to one hundred feet and upwards in 

 height by two to four feet or more in diameter. Bark dark 

 brown, thick, deeply fissured and broken ; leaves four to five 

 inches long, margins of these needle-straws finely saw-toothed, 

 in threes, short boots, one quarter of an inch or so. smooth 

 cheery-green ; cones shaped like a Farralone egg — the murre 

 or foolish guillemo, etc. — only obliquely one-sided or greatly 

 swelled out and knobbed on the exposed side at the base, for 

 the point is bent dowm or back close against the tree, three 

 to five, in whirled clusters; the somewhat diamond-rhombed 

 disk, short recurve-prickled in the center. These close cling- 

 cones are three to five inches long by tw r o to four thick ; color 

 light umber to cinnamon-brown, smooth and shining; re- 

 quires two to three years to ripen well, and remain on much 

 longer ; seeds black, tubercled, about one quarter of an inch 

 long, wing three or four times as long, widest above the 

 middle ; cotyledons, five to seven. 



The timber is very tough, and while more abundant, in 

 great demand for a thousand useful purposes, but the supply 

 soon failed and gave place to the redwood and other more 

 northern coast lumber. 



This incomparably quick-growing pine will, ere long, be 

 in the greatest demand for seed to reinstate those treeless 

 tracks and mountain ranges along tlie coast with those sweet 

 seolian forests which so much improve the barren soil, con- 

 duce to the salubrity and equable geniality of clime, to eco- 

 nomic demands of home and commerce, utility of pastoral 

 and arable lands of the interior of the State, especially south, 

 where the greatest lack is felt; and even the existence of 



