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Sierra Club Bulletin 



rock; but when they have the opportunity, these little alpine 

 pines show that they know well the difference between rich, 

 mealy moraines and their ordinary meager fare. The yel- 

 low pine is also a hardy rock-climber, and can live on wind and 

 snow, but it assembles in forests and attains noble dimensions 

 only upon nutritious moraines; while the sugar pine and the 

 two silver firs, which form so important a part of the grand 

 forest belt, can scarcely maintain life upon bald rocks in any 

 form, and reach full development only in the best moraine beds, 

 no matter what the elevation may be. The mass of the Sierra 

 forests indicates the extent and position of the moraine-beds 

 far more accurately than it does lines of climate. No matter 

 how advantageous the conditions of temperature and moisture, 

 forests can not exist without soil, and Sierra soils have been 

 laid down upon the solid rock. Accordingly, we find luxuriant 

 forests two hundred feet high terminated abruptly by bald 

 glacier-polished pavements. 



Man also is dependent upon the bounty of the ice for the 

 broad fields of fertile soil upon which his wheat and apples 

 grow. The wide plains extending along the base of the range 

 on both sides are mostly reformations of morainal detritus va- 

 riously sorted and intermixed. The valleys of the Owens, 

 Walker, and Carson rivers have younger soils than those of 

 the Sacram.ento and San Joaquin — that is, those of the former 

 valleys are of more recent origin, and are less changed by post- 

 glacial washings and decomposition. All the soil-beds re- 

 maining upon the Sierra flanks, when comprehended in one 

 view, appear like clouds in a sky half-clear ; the main belt ex- 

 tending along the middle, with long branching mountains above 

 it, a web of washed patches beneath, and with specialized mead- 

 ow and garden flecks everywhere. 



When, after the melting of the winter snow, we walk the dry 

 channel of a stream that we love, its beds of pebbles, dams of 

 boulders, its pool-basins and potholes and cascade inclines, 

 suggest all its famiUar forms and voices, as if it were present 

 in the full gush of spring. In like manner the various Sierra 

 soil-beds vividly bring before the mind the noble implements 

 employed by nature in their creation. The meadow recalls the 

 still lake, the boulder delta the gray booming torrent, the rug- 



