ot of a stately tree at night, unconscious and careless as to
what tree it is. During the night, when the moon is at the full, you
awaken and look up into a glory of shimmering light. The fine tapering
shape, the delicate fairy-like beauty, instantly appeal to the
sensitive soul and he feels he is in a veritable temple of beauty.

They are very sensitive trees. In many places a mere grass fire, quick
and very fierce for a short time, has destroyed quite a number.

_White Fir_. This follows closely the range of the incense cedar,
though in some places it is found as high as 8700 feet. It is one
of the most perfect trees in the Sierras. Ranging from sixty to one
hundred and fifty and even two hundred feet high, with a narrow crown
composed of flat sprays and a trunk naked for one-third to one-half
its height and from one to six feet in diameter, with a smooth bark,
silvery or whitish in young trees, becoming thick and heavily fissured
into rounded ridges on old trunks, and gray or drab-brown in color,
it is readily distinguishable, with its companion, the red fir, by the
regularity of construction of trunk, branch and branchlet. As Smeaton
Chase expresses it, "The fine smooth arms, set in regular formation,
divide and redivide again and again _ad infinitum_, weaving at
last into a maze of exquisitely symmetrical twigs and branchlets."

_Red Fir_. The range of the red fir is irregular. It occurs
on the Rubicon River and some of the headwaters of the west-flowing
streams, reaching a general height of 6000 feet, though it is
occasionally found as high as 7000 feet. In some parts of California
this is known as Douglas Spruce, and Jepson, in his _Silva of
California_ definitely states:

The name "fir" as applied to the species is so well
established among woodsmen that for the sake of
intelligibility the combination Douglas Fir, which prevents
confusion with the true firs and has been adopted by the
Pacific Coast Lumberman's Association, is here accepted,
notwithstanding that the name used by botanists, "Douglas
Spruce" is actually more fitting on account of the greater
number of spruce-like characteristics. It is neither true
spruce, fir, nor hemlock, but a marked type of a distinct
genus, namely, _pseudotsuga_.

It must not be confounded with the red silver fir (_Abies
Magnifica_) so eloquently described as the chief delight of the
Yosemite region by Smeaton Chase. It grows from