TS2 
THE GARDENER’S MONTHLY. 
May, 
Another element of great importance is the 
dryness of the atmosphere in the mountains. 
The summer tourist may object to the assertion 
that the atmosphere there is dry ; he may assure 
you that all that is said about the clear skies and 
the absence of rain is, to his certain personal ex¬ 
perience, a great mistake, or, as they often term 
it, u a fraud.” And it is very true that in the j 
months of July and August showers of rain, often 
accompanied with vivid thunderstorms, are of 
almost daily occurrence, and greatly interfere 
with pleasure parties. That is really so ; but 
the quantity of rain in those showers is generally 
small, and the rarified air soon absorbs a great 
part of the moisture. The climate is a dry one. 
If nothing else, the scarcity of ferns and the al¬ 
most absolute absence of club mosses would 
prove it, which in varied abundance adorn the 
Eastern mountains. 
Yegetation thrives in this climate best where 
mountains are high enough and cold enough to 
condense whatever moisture the winds may have 
brought from the Pacific Ocean, after having de¬ 
posited its greater part on the slopes of the west¬ 
ern mountains, where, in consequence, fogs are 
so prevailing and vegetation so luxuriant. 
Now, the 
HIGHEST ELEVATION OF THE ROCKY 
MOUNTAINS 
happens to be precisely in Colorado, where the 
great watershed itself and many of its spurs have 
an altitude above the sea of 10,000 to 12,000 feet, 
the peaks rising to 13,000 and 14,000, or even 
about 14,500 feet. 
It is a noteworthy fact that so many summits 
reach to this same altitude, and none are higher. 
The same is the case in the mountains of the 
Pacific States. They are real democratic mount¬ 
ains ; a great many tower high up, but not one 
of them attains such a domineering elevation as 
we find in other mountain systems. 
The Rocky Mountains do not really reach into 
the region of eternal snow, though the Alpine 
summits of many of them rise 2,000 to 3,000 feet 
above the timbered region. But snow is found 
on many of the higher ones all the year round, in 
localities where the nature of the surface has per¬ 
mitted drifts to accumulate, and has protected 
such drifts from the too powerful action of the 
summer’s sun. 
North as well as south of Colorado the Rocky 
Mountains do, with few exceptions, not reach to 
the altitude attained there, and in this circum¬ 
stance lies the explanation of the fact that their 
forests are poorer and are even replaced by the 
desolate sage bushes, as they are called, or, pro¬ 
perly, wormwoods. The forests of the central 
chain of the Rocky Mountains consist exclusive¬ 
ly of conifers. The deciduous trees, we find, 
are few and scattered. Along some mountain 
stream we meet here and there with a peculiar 
species of poplar or cottonwood, which, from its 
narrow leaves, you would at any time take for 
a willow rather than a poplar—the bitter or 
willow-leaved balsam poplar. The quaking as¬ 
pen is another species of poplar, common as a 
small bush on springy mountain slopes and 
valleys ; sometimes in wet flats it grows to be 
a tall tree, the bark furnishing a favorite food 
for the beavers, which just in such localities 
used to build their dams and construct their 
habitations - used to, for here, also they now 
almost belong to the things of the past. 
On the banks of these streams bushes of al¬ 
ders and willows and two peculiar kinds of birches 
grow, together with some other small shrubs, 
and these complete the list of ligneous plants 
with deciduous leaves ; but only the two kinds 
of poplars mentioned above grow up to real 
trees. They form no element in the constitution 
of the forest. No oaks, no Walnuts or hickories, 
no elms or sycamores, the , glory of our woods, 
are seen here. 
the forest is evergreen throughout, 
a feature which, in these parts of the Mississippi 
Yalley, we are entirely unfamiliar with. We 
have, to be sure, stunted cedars here and there 
in our woods ; in our hilly regions to the south¬ 
west are districts of yellow pine, but they are 
too limited in extent and too much mixed with 
deciduous trees to produce an effect approaching 
that of those evergreen mountain forests. 
Ear north as well as far south of us pines be¬ 
come more abundant. The white pine forests of 
the north and northeast, and long leaved, the 
yellow and other pines of the south and south¬ 
east cover, perhaps, as extended districts as the 
Rocky Mountain pines, and are far more import¬ 
ant in an economical point of view. But even 
they are not exclusive occupants of their region, 
and deciduous trees often mingle with them. 
But pines are not only now, in our day, or, I 
should more correctly say, in our present geo¬ 
logical epoch, characteristic of certain regions of 
the globe. Geological investigation has proven 
that there was a time in the history of our earth 
when pines were the first, the only exogenous 
trees in existence. In as early a period as the 
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