arranged in rather close tassels at the ends of slender branchlets
that clothe the long, outsweeping limbs. How well they sing in the wind,
and how strikingly harmonious an effect is made by the immense
cylindrical cones that depend loosely from the ends of the main
branches! No one knows what Nature can do in the way of pine-burs until
he has seen those of the Sugar Pine. They are commonly from fifteen to
eighteen inches long, and three in diameter; green, shaded with dark
purple on their sunward sides. They are ripe in September and October.
Then the flat scales open and the seeds take wing, but the empty cones
become still more beautiful and effective, for their diameter is nearly
doubled by the spreading of the scales, and their color changes to a
warm yellowish-brown; while they remain swinging on the tree all the
following winter and summer, and continue effectively beautiful even on
the ground many years after they fall. The wood is deliciously fragrant,
and fine in grain and texture; it is of a rich cream-yellow, as if
formed of condensed sunbeams. _Retinospora obtusa, Siebold_, the
glory of Eastern forests, is called "Fu-si-no-ki" (tree of the sun) by
the Japanese; the Sugar Pine is the sun-tree of the Sierra.
Unfortunately it is greatly prized by the lumbermen, and in accessible
places is always the first tree in the woods to feel their steel. But
the regular lumbermen, with their saw-mills, have been, less generally
destructive thus far than the shingle-makers. The wood splits freely,
and there is a constant demand for the shingles. And because an ax, and
saw, and frow are all the capital required for the business, many of
that drifting, unsteady class of men so large in California engage in it
for a few months in the year. When prospectors, hunters, ranch hands,
etc., touch their "bottom dollar" and find themselves out of employment,
they say, "Well, I can at least go to the Sugar Pines and make
shingles." A few posts are set in the ground, and a single length cut
from the first tree felled produces boards enough for the walls and roof
of a cabin; all the rest the lumberman makes is for sale, and he is
speedily independent. No gardener or haymaker is more sweetly perfumed
than these rough mountaineers while engaged in this business, but the
havoc they make is most deplorable.

[Illustration: SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE.]

The sugar, from which the common name is derived, is to my taste the
best of sweets--b