re more and more toward
the summit, thus forming a sharp, conical top. The foliage is short and
rigid, two leaves in a fascicle, arranged in comparatively long,
cylindrical tassels at the ends of the tough, up-curving branchlets. The
cones are about two inches long, growing in stiff clusters among the
needles, without making any striking effect, except while very young,
when they are of a vivid crimson color, and the whole tree appears to be
dotted with brilliant flowers. The sterile cones are still more showy,
on account of their great abundance, often giving a reddish-yellow tinge
to the whole mass of the foliage, and filling the air with pollen.

No other pine on the range is so regularly planted as this one. Moraine
forests sweep along the sides of the high, rocky valleys for miles
without interruption; still, strictly speaking, they are not dense, for
flecks of sunshine and flowers find their way into the darkest places,
where the trees grow tallest and thickest. Tall, nutritious grasses are
specially abundant beneath them, growing over all the ground, in
sunshine and shade, over extensive areas like a farmer's crop, and
serving as pasture for the multitude of sheep that are driven from the
arid plains every summer as soon as the snow is melted.

The Two-leaved Pine, more than any other, is subject to destruction by
fire. The thin bark is streaked and sprinkled with resin, as though it
had been showered down upon it like rain, so that even the green trees
catch fire readily, and during strong winds whole forests are destroyed,
the flames leaping from tree to tree, forming one continuous belt of
roaring fire that goes surging and racing onward above the bending
woods, like the grass-fires of a prairie. During the calm, dry season of
Indian summer, the fire creeps quietly along the ground, feeding on the
dry needles and burs; then, arriving at the foot of a tree, the resiny
bark is ignited, and the heated air ascends in a powerful current,
increasing in velocity, and dragging the flames swiftly upward; then the
leaves catch fire, and an immense column of flame, beautifully spired on
the edges, and tinted a rose-purple hue, rushes aloft thirty or forty
feet above the top of the tree, forming a grand spectacle, especially on
a dark night. It lasts, however, only a few seconds, vanishing with
magical rapidity, to be succeeded by others along the fire-line at
irregular intervals for weeks at a time--tree after tree flash