and ninety feet in height, but this is more than twice the ordinary
size.

This species is common throughout the Rocky Mountains and most of the
short ranges of the Great Basin, where it is called the Fox-tail Pine,
from its long dense leaf-tassels. On the Hot Creek, White Pine, and
Golden Gate ranges it is quite abundant. About a foot or eighteen inches
of the ends of the branches is densely packed with stiff outstanding
needles which radiate like an electric fox or squirrel's tail. The
needles have a glossy polish, and the sunshine sifting through them
makes them burn with silvery luster, while their number and elastic
temper tell delightfully in the winds. This tree is here still more
original and picturesque than in the Sierra, far surpassing not only its
companion conifers in this respect, but also the most noted of the
lowland oaks. Some stand firmly erect, feathered with radiant tassels
down to the ground, forming slender tapering towers of shining verdure;
others, with two or three specialized branches pushed out at right
angles to the trunk and densely clad with tasseled sprays, take the form
of beautiful ornamental crosses. Again in the same woods you find trees
that are made up of several boles united near the ground, spreading at
the sides in a plane parallel to the axis of the mountain, with the
elegant tassels hung in charming order between them, making a harp held
against the main wind lines where they are most effective in playing the
grand storm harmonies. And besides these there are many variable arching
forms, alone or in groups, with innumerable tassels drooping beneath the
arches or radiant above them, and many lowly giants of no particular
form that have braved the storms of a thousand years. But whether old or
young, sheltered or exposed to the wildest gales, this tree is ever
found irrepressibly and extravagantly picturesque, and offers a richer
and more varied series of forms to the artist than any other conifer I
know of.

NUT PINE
(_Pinus monophylla_)

The Nut Pine covers or rather dots the eastern flank of the Sierra, to
which it is mostly restricted, in grayish, bush-like patches, from the
margin of the sage-plains to an elevation of from 7000 to 8000 feet.

A more contentedly fruitful and unaspiring conifer could not be
conceived. All the species we have been sketching make departures more
or less distant from the typical spire form, but none goes so far as
this. Without any apparen