n diameter and
a narrowly cone-shaped crown composed of numerous horizontal strata of
fan-shaped sprays. The bark on young trees is whitish or silvery, on
old trunks dark red, very deeply and roughly fissured. The cones when
young are of a beautiful dull purple, when mature becoming brown.

_White Pine_. This is found on northern slopes as low down as
6500 feet, though it generally ranges above 7000 feet, and is quite
common. It sometimes is called the silver pine, and generally in the
Tahoe region, the mountain pine. It grows to a height of from fifty to
one hundred and seventy-five feet, the branches slender and spreading
or somewhat drooping, and mostly confined to the upper portion of the
shaft. The trunk is from one to six feet in diameter and clothed with
a very smooth though slightly checked whitish or reddish bark. The
needles are five (rarely four) in a place, very slender, one to three
and three-fourths inches long, sheathed at the base by thinnish narrow
deciduous scales, some of which are one inch long. The cones come in
clusters of one to seven, from six to eight or rarely ten inches
long, very slender when closed and usually curved towards the tip,
black-purple or green when young, buff-brown when ripe. It is best
recognized by its light-gray smooth bark, broken into squarish
plates, its pale-blue-green foliage composed of short needles, and its
pendulous cones so slender as to give rise to the name "Finger-Cone
Pine."

_Sugar Pine_. This is found on the lower terraces of Tahoe,
fringing the region with a sparse and scattering growth, but it is
not found on the higher slopes of the Sierra. On the western side
its range is nearly identical with that of the red fir. It grows from
eighty to one hundred and fifty feet high, the young and adult trees
symmetrical, but the aged trees commonly with broken summits or
characteristically flat-topped with one or two long arm-like branches
exceeding shorter ones. The trunk is from two to eight feet in
diameter, and the bark brown or reddish, closely fissured into rough
ridges. The needles are slender, five in a bundle, two to three and a
half inches long. The cones are pendulous, borne on stalks at the
end of the branches, mostly in the very summit of the tree, very
long-oblong, thirteen to eighteen inches long, four to six inches in
diameter when opened.

This pine gains its name from its sugary exudation, sought by
the native tribes, which forms hard whit