seventy to two hundred
and fifty or possibly three hundred and fifty feet high, and is the
most important lumber tree of the country, considering the quality of
its timber, the size and length of its logs, and the great amount of
heavy wood and freedom from knots, shakes or defects. On young trees
the bark is smooth, gray or mottled, sometimes alder-like; on old
trunks one to six and a half inches thick, soft or putty-like, dark
brown, fissured into broad heavy furrows. The young rapid growth in
the open woods produces "red fir", the older slower growth in denser
woods is "yellow fir". Every tree to a greater or lesser extent
exhibits successively these two phases, which are dependent upon
situation and exposure.

The chief difference between the white and red fir is in the
_spiculae_ or leaves. Those of the red fir are shorter, stubbier
and stiffer than those of the white. The bark, however, is pretty
nearly alike in young trees and shows a marked difference when they
get to be forty to fifty years old.

_The Alpine Spruce_ (_Hesperopeuce Pattoniana_ Lemmon) is
found only in the highest elevations. Common in Alaska it is limited
in the Tahoe region to the upper points of forests that creep up
along glacier beds and volcanic ravines, close to perpetual ice. It
disappears at 10,000 feet altitude on Mt. Whitney and is found nowhere
south of this point. On Tallac, Mt. Rose and all the higher peaks
of the Tahoe region it is common, giving constant delight with its
slender shaft, eighty to a hundred feet high, and with a diameter at
its base of from six to twelve feet. It is only in the lower portions
of the belt where it occurs. Higher it is reduced to low conical
masses of foliage or prostrate creeping shrubs.

By many it is regarded as a hemlock, but it is not strictly so. It was
first discovered in 1852 by John Jeffrey, who followed David Douglas
in his explorations of the forests of the American Northwest.

In favorable situations, the lower limbs are retained and
become long, out-reaching, and spreading over the mountain
slope for many feet; the upper limbs are irregularly disposed,
not whorled; they strike downward from the start (so that it
is almost impossible to climb one of the trees for want of
foothold), then curving outward to the outline of the tree,
they are terminated by short, hairy branchlets that decline
gracefully, and are decorated with pendant cones which are
g