s
giving them a singularly rich and sumptuous appearance. The extreme top
of the tree is a thick blunt shoot pointing straight to the zenith like
an admonishing finger. The cones stand erect like casks on the upper
branches. They are about six inches long, three in diameter, blunt,
velvety, and cylindrical in form, and very rich and precious looking.
The seeds are about three quarters of an inch long, dark reddish brown
with brilliant iridescent purple wings, and when ripe, the cone falls
to pieces, and the seeds thus set free at a height of one hundred and
fifty or two hundred feet have a good send off and may fly considerable
distances in a good breeze; and it is when a good breeze is blowing that
most of them are shaken free to fly.

The other species, _Abies concolor_, attains nearly as great a height
and thickness as the _magnifica_, but the branches do not form such
regular whorls, nor are they so exactly pinnated or richly leaf-clad.
Instead of growing all around the branchlets, the leaves are mostly
arranged in two flat horizontal rows. The cones and seeds are like those
of the _magnifica_ in form but less than half as large. The bark of the
_magnifica_ is reddish purple and closely furrowed, that of the
_concolor_ gray and widely furrowed. A noble pair.

At Crane Flat we climbed a thousand feet or more in a distance of about
two miles, the forest growing more dense and the silvery _magnifica_ fir
forming a still greater portion of the whole. Crane Flat is a meadow
with a wide sandy border lying on the top of the divide. It is often
visited by blue cranes to rest and feed on their long journeys, hence
the name. It is about half a mile long, draining into the Merced, sedgy
in the middle, with a margin bright with lilies, columbines, larkspurs,
lupines, castilleia, then an outer zone of dry, gently sloping ground
starred with a multitude of small flowers,--eunanus, mimulus, gilia,
with rosettes of spraguea, and tufts of several species of eriogonum and
the brilliant zauschneria. The noble forest wall about it is made up of
the two silver firs and the yellow and sugar pines, which here seem to
reach their highest pitch of beauty and grandeur; for the elevation, six
thousand feet or a little more, is not too great for the sugar and
yellow pines or too low for the _magnifica_ fir, while the _concolor_
seems to find this elevation the best possible. About a mile from the
north end of the flat there is a grove of _Seq