ys.

Through a meadow opening in the pine woods I see snowy peaks about the
headwaters of the Merced above Yosemite. How near they seem and how
clear their outlines on the blue air, or rather _in_ the blue air; for
they seem to be saturated with it. How consuming strong the invitation
they extend! Shall I be allowed to go to them? Night and day I'll pray
that I may, but it seems too good to be true. Some one worthy will go,
able for the Godful work, yet as far as I can I must drift about these
love-monument mountains, glad to be a servant of servants in so holy a
wilderness.

Found a lovely lily (_Calochortus albus_) in a shady adenostoma thicket
near Coulterville, in company with _Adiantum Chilense_. It is white with
a faint purplish tinge inside at the base of the petals, a most
impressive plant, pure as a snow crystal, one of the plant saints that
all must love and be made so much the purer by it every time it is seen.
It puts the roughest mountaineer on his good behavior. With this plant
the whole world would seem rich though none other existed. It is not
easy to keep on with the camp cloud while such plant people are standing
preaching by the wayside.

During the afternoon we passed a fine meadow bounded by stately pines,
mostly the arrowy yellow pine, with here and there a noble sugar pine,
its feathery arms outspread above the spires of its companion species in
marked contrast; a glorious tree, its cones fifteen to twenty inches
long, swinging like tassels at the ends of the branches with superb
ornamental effect. Saw some logs of this species at the Greeley Mill.
They are round and regular as if turned in a lathe, excepting the butt
cuts, which have a few buttressing projections. The fragrance of the
sugary sap is delicious and scents the mill and lumber yard. How
beautiful the ground beneath this pine thickly strewn with slender
needles and grand cones, and the piles of cone-scales, seed-wings and
shells around the instep of each tree where the squirrels have been
feasting! They get the seeds by cutting off the scales at the base in
regular order, following their spiral arrangement, and the two seeds at
the base of each scale, a hundred or two in a cone, must make a good
meal. The yellow pine cones and those of most other species and genera
are held upside down on the ground by the Douglas squirrel, and turned
around gradually until stripped, while he sits usually with his back to
a tree, probably for safety