216 
THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY. 
July , 
with the elements, are injured, thinned out in 
colder winters, until only a few of the toughest 
are left, scattered, perhaps, where the ground 
affords a slight protection, but always woeful¬ 
ly maltreated and crippled by the overpowering 
forces opposed to them. 
This belt, this bat le field, narrower or wider, 
according to the nature of the ground and the 
steepness of the slope, has amost picturesque 
but at the same time a most dismal aspect, the 
jX very image of living nature in its combat with 
the elements. 
Suppose we approach it from the east, or on an 
eastern slope. The -last trees, still a foot or a 
foot and a half in diameter, and thirty or forty 
feet high, are behind us, before us, a few hun¬ 
dred yards, or, may be, a quarter of a mile, 
crooked or gnarled bushes bent toward us, some¬ 
times almost prostrate on the ground, smaller 
and farther apart as we rise higher. They are 
apparently well covered with leaves, and abun¬ 
dantly branching, and often of unimpaired fertil¬ 
ity, and covered wi h cones. 
We have passed this belt, and now turn round. 
What a moment ago were fresh and fruitful, 
though misshapen bushes, are now turned into 
white and ghastly skeletons. Bare trunks aud 
branches only are in sight; stripped of leaves, 
and of bark even, and bent over to the east. 
The terrible Western whiter storms and pelt- 
11 ing hail, against which there is no protection in 
these altitudes, have killed the entire western 
half of these bushes ; ODly their eastern succum- 
bent half lives a precarious life. 
Is it not singular that photographic art has not 
among the hundreds of mountain views annually 
taken preserved a single one that I could dis¬ 
cover of such remarkable scenery ? 
One of the pines which thus encroach upon the 
Alpine domain is our mountain spruce, the other 
is the hickory pine which we meet here for the 
first time. We might have seen it, however, on 
Douglas Mountain, near Empire, where it comes 
down to about 900ipfeet above the ocean. It is 
often seen in Colorado, from that* altitude to 
the timber line, wherever the soil is rocky and 
barren enough, while the spruce prefers more 
fertile and damp ground. 
The hickory pine (Pinus aristata), also a dis¬ 
covery of Dr. Parry, has its name from its very 
hard and tough wood, which when communica¬ 
tion with the east was more difficult than it now 
is, was used where we employ maple or hickory. 
It ir one of the five leaved pines like the white 
pine, but with very different, short, oval, dark 
purple cones. 
On Douglas Mountain, and here and there 
over the higher mountains, between 8,000 and 
11.000 feet altitude, still another and very sin¬ 
gular pine occurs—the squirrel pine P. flexilis— 
still more like the white pine, but with large edi¬ 
ble seeds, much esteemed by the former Indian 
owners of the soil, and as well by the squirrels, 
some species of which inhabit these woods, and 
leave their traces in the shape of torn and plun¬ 
dered pine cones under the trees. 
The action of animals to obtain the seeds of 
some of these conifers is often very ingenious. 
The cones, as I have said, usually open at matu¬ 
rity, and scatter the seeds far and wide. To 
prevent such a waste of the good thing, some 
animals, most probably birds, cut the small 
branchlets just before the cones mature, and 
drop these-to the ground, where they can feast 
on the seeds at leisure. 
In two of the junipers of the Colorado Moun¬ 
tains we meet old acquaintances. 
One is the well-known iuniper bush of the 
North and East and of Europe, and the other, 
wbat we usually call our cedar. They are the 
only conifers extending from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific. 
We have lingered so long among the pines of 
the Snowy Range and the Clear Creek Valley 
that your patience is, I fear, well nigh exhausted, 
and I will scarcely find time to do more than 
allude to the conifers which are peculiar to 
Southern Colorado ; to that part of the State- 
State it is since yesterday—watered by the afflu¬ 
ents of the Arkansas River. 
An elevated country between Denver and Col¬ 
orado Springs called the Divide separates not 
only a northern from a southern slope, but also 
a northern from a southern flora. 
The mountain hemlock and the heavy pine 
are common to both districts; other north¬ 
ern or sub-alpine conifers are also found in con¬ 
genial locations of the southern mountains; but 
a few species, which we have not yet seen, make 
their appearance about the base of the moun¬ 
tains. 
A new balsam fir, named by me many years 
ago—from Santa Fe specimens—Abies concolor, 
because of its light bluish leaves, of the same 
color on both sides, graces the gorges in the 
sandstone formation at the foot of Pike’s Peak, 
the Ute Pass near Manitou, Cheyenne Canyon, 
and, above all, the charming Glen Eyrie, a tree 
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Botanical 
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