deas, the big tree was never more widely distributed than now,
at least not within the past 8000 or 10,000 years; that it is not a
decaying species, but that on the contrary "no tree of all the forest is
more enduringly established in concord with climate and soil," growing
like the mountain pine even on granite, and in little danger save from
the greed of the lumberman; but other excellent authorities consider it
as hardly holding its own, especially in the north. Three main wood
belts cover the flanks of the Sierra: the lower or main pine belt, the
silver fir belt, and the upper pine belt. The sugar pine, the yellow or
silver pine and the Douglas spruce (considerably smaller than in Oregon
and Washington), are rivals in stature and nobility, all attaining 200
ft. or more when full grown; and the incense cedar reaches a height of
150 ft. In this belt and the following one of firs the big tree also
grows. The white silver fir (_abies concolor_) and the silver or red fir
(_ab. magnifica_), standing 200 to 250 ft., make up almost wholly the
main forest belt from 5000 to 9000 ft. for some 450 m. Above the firs
come the tamarack, constituting the bulk of the lower Alpine forest; the
hardy long-lived mountain pine; the red cedar or juniper, growing even
on the baldest rocks; the beautiful hemlock spruce; the still higher
white pine, nut pine, needle pine; and finally, at 10,000 to 12,000 ft.,
the dwarf pine, which grows in a tangle on the earth over which one
walks, and may not show for a century's growth more than a foot of
height or an inch of girth. The Nevada slope of the mountains below 7500
ft. is covered with the nut pine down to the sage plains. Its nuts are
gathered in enormous amounts by the Indians for food; and it is
estimated that the yearly harvest of these nuts exceeds in bulk that of
all the cereals of California (John Muir). On the Sierra the underbrush
is characterized by the pungent manzanita, the California buckeye and
the chamiso; the last two growing equally abundantly on the Coast Range.
The chamiso and the manzanita, with a variety of shrubby oaks and thorny
plants, often grow together in a dense and sometimes quite impenetrable
undergrowth, forming what is known as "chaparral"; if the chamiso occurs
alone the thicket is a "chamisal." The elm, the hickory, the beech, the
chestnut, and many others of the most characteristic and useful trees of
the eastern states were originally entirely wanting in Califor