g in the alder and
maple groves, the same old song that has cheered and sweetened countless
seasons over almost all of our blessed continent. In this mountain
hollow they seem as much at home as in farmers' orchards. Bullock's
oriole and the Louisiana tanager are here also, with many warblers and
other little mountain troubadours, most of them now busy about their
nests.

Discovered another magnificent specimen of the goldcup oak six feet in
diameter, a Douglas spruce seven feet, and a twining lily
(_Stropholirion_), with stem eight feet long, and sixty rose-colored
flowers.

[Illustration: SUGAR PINE]

Sugar pine cones are cylindrical, slightly tapered at the end and
rounded at the base. Found one to-day nearly twenty-four inches long and
six in diameter, the scales being open. Another specimen nineteen inches
long; the average length of full-grown cones on trees favorably situated
is nearly eighteen inches. On the lower edge of the belt at a height of
about twenty-five hundred feet above the sea they are smaller, say a
foot to fifteen inches long, and at a height of seven thousand feet or
more near the upper limits of its growth in the Yosemite region they are
about the same size. This noble tree is an inexhaustible study and
source of pleasure. I never weary of gazing at its grand tassel cones,
its perfectly round bole one hundred feet or more without a limb, the
fine purplish color of its bark, and its magnificent outsweeping,
down-curving feathery arms forming a crown always bold and striking and
exhilarating. In habit and general port it looks somewhat like a palm,
but no palm that I have yet seen displays such majesty of form and
behavior either when poised silent and thoughtful in sunshine, or
wide-awake waving in storm winds with every needle quivering. When young
it is very straight and regular in form like most other conifers; but at
the age of fifty to one hundred years it begins to acquire
individuality, so that no two are alike in their prime or old age. Every
tree calls for special admiration. I have been making many sketches, and
regret that I cannot draw every needle. It is said to reach a height of
three hundred feet, though the tallest I have measured falls short of
this stature sixty feet or more. The diameter of the largest near the
ground is about ten feet, though I've heard of some twelve feet thick or
even fifteen. The diameter is held to a great height, the taper being
almost imperceptibly g