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The Christmas Spirits and the Trees: December: California

In our illustrations we show five varieties: The Mexican Nut-Pine, of Arizona; Parry's Nut, native to lower California; Rocky Mountain Nut of Arizona and western Texas; the White-Bark Pine, British Columbia to southern California and east to Montana and Wyoming. Like the rest of the nut trees among the Pines, the W.B.P. is small, but its cones find a ready market with the Indians and the crows. The crows make it a point to tear open the cones and eat the seeds before they are quite ripe - the black rascals! Is this because they want to get ahead of their red brothers, do you suppose? Mexican Nut: L: 2, 3/4-1 1/2; C: 1-2 broad; 2 x 50. Parry, L: 4, 1 1/4-1 1/2; C: 1-2 broad; 18 inches x 40 feet. Rocky M., L: 2, 1-2; C: 1-2 broad; 1 x 20. W.B.P., L: 5, 1 1/2-2 1/2; C: 1 1/2-3; 2 x 20.

MASTER JACK AND THE GIANTS Bull-Pine: L: 2-3, 4-9; C: 3-6; 8 x 230. Now, by way of contrast for size, take the big Bull or Western Yellow Pine, with its short, thick, many-forked branches, often drooping, but generally turned up at the ends, "like a drake's tail," I was going to say, although it hardly seems in keeping with the majesty of a magnificent tree. But, anyhow, this splendid specimen of forest architecture is most impressive, with its lofty height and spire-like head. Its needles grow in tufts at the ends of naked branches. The scales of its cones you won't easily forget; they have savage little prickles on them, either standing out like spears or recurved like a bee's sting. It grows on mountain slopes and high mesas and in dry valleys in all our western mountain States.