or five feet in length by eighteen inches in width, with a thickness of
three or four inches, forming a quite marked and distinguishing feature.
The needles are of a fine, warm, yellow-green color, six to eight inches
long, firm and elastic, and crowded in handsome, radiant tassels on the
upturning ends of the branches. The cones are about three or four inches
long, and two and a half wide, growing in close, sessile clusters among
the leaves.

[Illustration: PINUS PONDEROSA.]

The species attains its noblest form in filled-up lake basins,
especially in those of the older yosemites, and so prominent a part does
it form of their groves that it may well be called the Yosemite Pine.
Ripe specimens favorably situated are almost always 200 feet or more in
height, and the branches clothe the trunk nearly to the ground, as seen
in the illustration.

The Jeffrey variety attains its finest development in the northern
portion of the range, in the wide basins of the McCloud and Pitt rivers,
where it forms magnificent forests scarcely invaded by any other tree.
It differs from the ordinary form in size, being only about half as
tall, and in its redder and more closely furrowed bark, grayish-green
foliage, less divided branches, and larger cones; but intermediate forms
come in which make a clear separation impossible, although some
botanists regard it as a distinct species. It is this variety that
climbs storm-swept ridges, and wanders out among the volcanoes of the
Great Basin. Whether exposed to extremes of heat or cold, it is dwarfed
like every other tree, and becomes all knots and angles, wholly unlike
the majestic forms we have been sketching. Old specimens, bearing cones
about as big as pineapples, may sometimes be found clinging to rifted
rocks at an elevation of seven or eight thousand feet, whose highest
branches scarce reach above one's shoulders.

[Illustration: SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH. (THE FORM GROWING IN YOSEMITE
VALLEY.)]

I have oftentimes feasted on the beauty of these noble trees when they
were towering in all their winter grandeur, laden with snow--one mass of
bloom; in summer, too, when the brown, staminate clusters hang thick
among the shimmering needles, and the big purple burs are ripening in
the mellow light; but it is during cloudless wind-storms that these
colossal pines are most impressively beautiful. Then they bow like
willows, their leaves streaming forward all in one direction, and, when
the su