ing and
darkening, leaving the trunks and branches hardly scarred. The heat,
however, is sufficient to kill the trees, and in a few years the bark
shrivels and falls off. Belts miles in extent are thus killed and left
standing with the branches on, peeled and rigid, appearing gray in the
distance, like misty clouds. Later the branches drop off, leaving a
forest of bleached spars. At length the roots decay, and the forlorn
trunks are blown down during some storm, and piled one upon another
encumbering the ground until they are consumed by the next fire, and
leave it ready for a fresh crop.

The endurance of the species is shown by its wandering occasionally out
over the lava plains with the Yellow Pine, and climbing moraineless
mountain-sides with the Dwarf Pine, clinging to any chance support in
rifts and crevices of storm-beaten rocks--always, however, showing the
effects of such hardships in every feature.

Down in sheltered lake hollows, on beds of rich alluvium, it varies so
far from the common form as frequently to be taken for a distinct
species. Here it grows in dense sods, like grasses, from forty to eighty
feet high, bending all together to the breeze and whirling in eddying
gusts more lithely than any other tree in the woods. I have frequently
found specimens fifty feet high less than five inches in diameter. Being
thus slender, and at the same time well clad with leafy boughs, it is
oftentimes bent to the ground when laden with soft snow, forming
beautiful arches in endless variety, some of which last until the
melting of the snow in spring.

MOUNTAIN PINE
(_Pinus monticola_)

The Mountain Pine is king of the alpine woods, brave, hardy, and
long-lived, towering grandly above its companions, and becoming stronger
and more imposing just where other species begin to crouch and
disappear. At its best it is usually about ninety feet high and five or
six in diameter, though a specimen is often met considerably larger than
this. The trunk is as massive and as suggestive of enduring strength as
that of an oak. About two thirds of the trunk is commonly free of limbs,
but close, fringy tufts of sprays occur all the way down, like those
which adorn the colossal shafts of Sequoia. The bark is deep
reddish-brown upon trees that occupy exposed situations near its upper
limit, and furrowed rather deeply, the main furrows running nearly
parallel with each other, and connected by conspicuous cross furrows,
which, with