The value of this species to Nevada is not easily overestimated.  It furnishes charcoal and timber for the mines, and, with the juniper, supplies the ranches with fuel and rough fencing.  In fruitful seasons the nut crop is perhaps greater than the California wheat crop, which exerts so much influence throughout the food markets of the world.  When, the crop is ripe, the Indians make ready the long beating-poles; bags, baskets, mats, and sacks are collected; the women out at service among the settlers, washing or drudging, assemble at the family huts; the men leave their ranch work; old and young, all are mounted on ponies and start in great glee to the nut-lands, forming curiously picturesque cavalcades; flaming scarfs and calico skirts stream loosely over the knotty ponies, two squaws usually astride of each, with baby midgets bandaged in baskets slung on their backs or balanced on the saddle-bow; while nut-baskets and water-jars project from each side, and the long beating-poles make angles in every direction.  Arriving at some well-known central point where grass and water are found, the squaws with baskets, the men with poles ascend the ridges to the laden trees, followed by the children.  Then the beating begins right merrily, the burs fly in every direction, rolling down the slopes, lodging here and there against rocks and sage-bushes, chased and gathered by the women and children with fine natural gladness.  Smoke-columns speedily mark the joyful scene of their labors as the roasting-fires are kindled, and, at night, assembled in gay circles garrulous as jays, they begin the first nut feast of the season.

The nuts are about half an inch long and a quarter of an inch in diameter, pointed at the top, round at the base, light brown in general color, and, like many other pine seeds, handsomely dotted with purple, like birds’ eggs.  The shells are thin and may be crushed between the thumb and finger.  The kernels are white, becoming brown by roasting, and are sweet to every palate, being eaten by birds, squirrels, dogs, horses, and men.  Perhaps less than one bushel in a thousand of the whole crop is ever gathered.  Still, besides supplying their own wants, in times of plenty the Indians bring large quantities to market; then they are eaten around nearly every fireside in the State, and are even fed to horses occasionally instead of barley.

Of other trees growing on the Sierra, but forming a very small part of the general forest, we may briefly notice the following: 

Chamoecyparis Lawsoniana is a magnificent tree in the coast ranges, but small in the Sierra.  It is found only well to the northward along the banks of cool streams on the upper Sacramento toward Mount Shasta.  Only a few trees of this species, as far as I have seen, have as yet gained a place in the Sierra woods.  It has evidently been derived from the coast range by way of the tangle of connecting mountains at the head of the Sacramento Valley.