[Illustration:  YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES.]

Although so wild and unconventional when full-grown, the Sugar Pine is a remarkably proper tree in youth.  The old is the most original and independent in appearance of all the Sierra evergreens; the young is the most regular,—­a strict follower of coniferous fashions,—­slim, erect, with leafy, supple branches kept exactly in place, each tapering in outline and terminating in a spiry point.  The successive transitional forms presented between the cautious neatness of youth and bold freedom of maturity offer a delightful study.  At the age of fifty or sixty years, the shy, fashionable form begins to be broken up.  Specialized branches push out in the most unthought-of places, and bend with the great cones, at once marking individual character, and this being constantly augmented from year to year by the varying action of the sunlight, winds, snow-storms, etc., the individuality of the tree is never again lost in the general forest.

The most constant companion of this species is the Yellow Pine, and a worthy companion it is.

[Illustration:  FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE.]

The Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, Sequoia, and the White Silver Fir are also more or less associated with it; but on many deep-soiled mountain-sides, at an elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, it forms the bulk of the forest, filling every swell and hollow and down-plunging ravine.  The majestic crowns, approaching each other in bold curves, make a glorious canopy through which the tempered sunbeams pour, silvering the needles, and gilding the massive boles, and flowery, park-like ground, into a scene of enchantment.

On the most sunny slopes the white-flowered fragrant chamoebatia is spread like a carpet, brightened during early summer with the crimson Sarcodes, the wild rose, and innumerable violets and gilias.  Not even in the shadiest nooks will you find any rank, untidy weeds or unwholesome darkness.  On the north sides of ridges the boles are more slender, and the ground is mostly occupied by an underbrush of hazel, ceanothus, and flowering dogwood, but never so densely as to prevent the traveler from sauntering where he will; while the crowning branches are never impenetrable to the rays of the sun, and never so interblended as to lose their individuality.

View the forest from beneath or from some commanding ridge-top; each tree presents a study in itself, and proclaims the surpassing grandeur of the species.

YELLOW, OR SILVER PINE (Pinus ponderosa)