branches with hatchets, while the squaws gather the big, generous cones, and roast them until the scales open sufficiently to allow the hard-shelled seeds to be beaten out.  Then, in the cool evenings, men, women, and children, with their capacity for dirt greatly increased by the soft resin with which they are all bedraggled, form circles around camp-fires, on the bank of the nearest stream, and lie in easy independence cracking nuts and laughing and chattering, as heedless of the future as the squirrels.

Pinus tuberculata

This curious little pine is found at an elevation of from 1500 to 3000 feet, growing in close, willowy groves.  It is exceedingly slender and graceful in habit, although trees that chance to stand alone outside the groves sweep forth long, curved branches, producing a striking contrast to the ordinary grove form.  The foliage is of the same peculiar gray-green color as that of the Nut Pine, and is worn about as loosely, so that the body of the tree is scarcely obscured by it.

[Illustration:  THE GROVE FORM.  THE ISOLATED FORM (PINUS TUBERCULATA).]

At the age of seven or eight years it begins to bear cones, not on branches, but on the main axis, and, as they never fall off, the trunk is soon picturesquely dotted with them.  The branches also become fruitful after they attain sufficient size.  The average size of the older trees is about thirty or forty feet in height, and twelve to fourteen inches in diameter.  The cones are about four inches long, exceedingly hard, and covered with a sort of silicious varnish and gum, rendering them impervious to moisture, evidently with a view to the careful preservation of the seeds.

No other conifer in the range is so closely restricted to special localities.  It is usually found apart, standing deep in chaparral on sunny hill-and canon-sides where there is but little depth of soil, and, where found at all, it is quite plentiful; but the ordinary traveler, following carriage-roads and trails, may ascend the range many times without meeting it.

While exploring the lower portion of the Merced Canon I found a lonely miner seeking his fortune in a quartz vein on a wild mountain-side planted with this singular tree.  He told me that he called it the Hickory Pine, because of the whiteness and toughness of the wood.  It is so little known, however, that it can hardly be said to have a common name.  Most mountaineers refer to it as “that queer little pine-tree covered all over with burs.”  In my studies of this species I found a very interesting and significant group of facts, whose relations will be seen almost as soon as stated: 

1st.  All the trees in the groves I examined, however unequal in size, are of the same age.

2d.  Those groves are all planted on dry hillsides covered with chaparral, and therefore are liable to be swept by fire.

3d.  There are no seedlings or saplings in or about the living groves, but there is always a fine, hopeful crop springing up on the ground once occupied by any grove that has been destroyed by the burning of the chaparral.