f the whole crop has
been gathered. But the squirrels and birds are still busily engaged,
and by the time that Nature's ends are accomplished, every nut will
doubtless have been put to use.

All of the nine Nevada conifers mentioned in my last letter are also
found in California, excepting only the Rocky Mountain spruce, which I
have not observed westward of the Snake Range. So greatly, however, have
they been made to vary by differences of soil and climate, that most of
them appear as distinct species. Without seeming in any way dwarfed or
repressed in habit, they nowhere develop to anything like California
dimensions. A height of fifty feet and diameter of twelve or fourteen
inches would probably be found to be above the average size of those
cut for lumber. On the margin of the Carson and Humboldt Sink the larger
sage bushes are called "heavy timber"; and to the settlers here any tree
seems large enough for saw-logs.

Mills have been built in the most accessible canyons of the higher
ranges, and sufficient lumber of an inferior kind is made to supply most
of the local demand. The principal lumber trees of Nevada are the white
pine (Pinus flexilis), foxtail pine, and Douglas spruce, or "red
pine," as it is called here. Of these the first named is most generally
distributed, being found on all the higher ranges throughout the State.
In botanical characters it is nearly allied to the Weymouth, or white,
pine of the Eastern States, and to the sugar and mountain pines of the
Sierra. In open situations it branches near the ground and tosses out
long down-curving limbs all around, often gaining in this way a very
strikingly picturesque habit. It is seldom found lower than nine
thousand feet above the level of the sea, but from this height it
pushes upward over the roughest ledges to the extreme limit of tree
growth--about eleven thousand feet.

On the Hot Creek, White Pine, and Golden Gate ranges we find a still
hardier and more picturesque species, called the foxtail pine, from its
long dense leaf-tassels. About a foot or eighteen inches of the ends of
the branches are densely packed with stiff outstanding needles, which
radiate all around like an electric fox- or squirrel-tail. The needles
are about an inch and a half long, slightly curved, elastic, and
glossily polished, so that the sunshine sifting through them makes them
burn with a fine silvery luster, while their number and elastic temper
tell delightfully in the