at are handsomely feathered with the short leaves which radiate at
right angles all around them. This vigorous spruce is ever beautiful,
welcoming the mountain winds and the snow as well as the mellow summer
light, and maintaining its youthful freshness undiminished from century
to century through a thousand storms.

It makes its finest appearance in the months of June and July. The rich
brown buds with which its sprays are tipped swell and break about this
time, revealing the young leaves, which at first are bright yellow,
making the tree appear as if covered with gay blossoms; while the
pendulous bracted cones with their shell-like scales are a constant
adornment.

The young trees are mostly gathered into beautiful family groups, each
sapling exquisitely symmetrical. The primary branches are whorled
regularly around the axis, generally in fives, while each is draped with
long, feathery sprays, that descend in curves as free and as finely
drawn as those of falling water.

In Oregon and Washington it grows in dense forests, growing tall and
mast-like to a height of 300 feet, and is greatly prized as a lumber
tree. But in the Sierra it is scattered among other trees, or forms
small groves, seldom ascending higher than 5500 feet, and never making
what would be called a forest. It is not particular in its choice of
soil--wet or dry, smooth or rocky, it makes out to live well on them
all. Two of the largest specimens I have measured are in Yosemite
Valley, one of which is more than eight feet in diameter, and is growing
upon the terminal moraine of the residual glacier that occupied the
South Fork Canon; the other is nearly as large, growing upon angular
blocks of granite that have been shaken from the precipitous front of
the Liberty Cap near the Nevada Fall. No other tree seems so capable of
adapting itself to earthquake taluses, and many of these rough
boulder-slopes are occupied by it almost exclusively, especially in
yosemite gorges moistened by the spray of waterfalls.

INCENSE CEDAR
(_Libocedrus decurrens_)

The Incense Cedar is another of the giants quite generally distributed
throughout this portion of the forest, without exclusively occupying any
considerable area, or even making extensive groves. It ascends to about
5000 feet on the warmer hillsides, and reaches the climate most
congenial to it at about from 3000 to 4000 feet, growing vigorously at
this elevation on all kinds of soil, and in particular it