which disappears in April, when spring opens balmy and pleasant. Hundreds of thousands of acres of this range is deep loam soil, fit for agriculture, with rich meadows from which are cut large quantities of hay. This district affords the finest pasture-range in summer on the whole coast. In this range, also, down its rugged sides, are the vast forests of firs, oaks, and pines, which will be found more fully described under the head of "Forests" further on. Snow almost entirely disappears from the Sierras in summer. By the middle of July, not a trace of winter can be seen except in a few isolated spots, where, high up in the clouds, clinging to the northern side of some towering peak, may be seen small patches of snow, as if dodging and hiding from the powerful rays of the sun, which through the long summer pours down its scorching floods of light and heat, melting all before it and parching the valleys below. Farming, lumbering, and grazing are carried on with success in this range. Indeed, it is yearly becoming the resort of the tourist, and thousands of the citizens of the towns and villages of the scorched plains of the lower country repair hither in the summer months, to bask beneath the luxuriant foliage, angle in the streams, float upon the placid lakes, gaze upon the towering columns of the smooth granite and slate mountain peaks, which, like cathedral domes, lift their imposing heads above the clouds; or wander upon the verdant lawn, in admiration of the mysterious wonders and beauties of the famed Yosemite, whose ever-changing scenes of gauzy vapor, and dancing, fickle rainbows, present scenes more like the fabled dreams of fairy land than the realities of earth. FORESTS. The greater part of the State of California (except the high mountains) consists of rolling hills, rich and fertile valleys, swamp and overflowed lands, and is entirely free from rock; and, as far as the eye can reach, in all directions, without tree or shrub of any kind, except a fringe of willow or cottonwood about the edges of the streams and springs, a few clumps of broadspread oaks in the valleys, or straggling ones about the ravines and cañons of the hills. Along the Coast Range, the Sierras, and the various smaller mountain chains and ridges, forests of oak, pine, white and red cedar, cypress, laurel, fir, and other species are abundant west of Santa Cruz; south of this point, in the Coast Range, timber is confined chiefly to scattering trees or a few groups of inferior growth. Redwood-a species of cedar-grows in great profusion, is of common use in house-building, and forms a staple commercial lumber throughout the State. This tree grows to a great size: one in Santa Cruz county is two hundred and seventy-five feet in height and nineteen feet in diameter. Many trees can be found among this class of from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty feet in height, and six, eight, ten, and fourteen feet in diameter. The wood is of a reddish color, very free from knots, and splits easily; is very durable, although not very strong. Common to the Coast Range, valleys and hills, is a great variety of trees and shrubs of variegated and beautiful appearance, differing very essentially from the same species in other countries; many of them entirely confined to the State of California. In the large variety in the State are the wild nutmeg, ironwood, poplar "BIG TREES," MARIPOSA AND CALVERAS GROVES, CALIFORNIA. (First tree, 350 feet high and 28 feet in diameter; Second tree 386 feet high and 31 feet in diameter.) white cedar, cypress, Monterey pine, walnut, willow, dogwood, cherry, white maple, in the southern coast; throughout the central and northern part of the State may be found the yew, chestnut, ash, alder, cottonwood, manzanita, madroña, laurel, chinquapin, oak, sycamore, balsam-fir, spruce, cedar, sugar and other pine, walnut, dogwood, crab-apple, buckthorn, lilac, cherry, plum, grape-vine, vine-maple, and sequoia, (mammoth tree.) It will be observed that California is destitute of many of the species of valuable timber of the Atlantic States and Canada, such as beech, birch, sugar-maple, hemlock, juniper, elm, and hickory. To compensate in some degree for the loss of those valuable forest trees California has many species peculiar to her soil, not to be found in any other part of the globe; indeed all her trees, flowers, and shrubs seem to be different fron, those in any other country, many of the former supplying the finest quality of cabinet and house timber. THE BIG TREES. These are found only in the Sierra range, and chiefly in the groups of Calaveras, Mariposa, Tuolumne, and Tulare counties. They stand in solitary grandeur, as the most gigantic specimens of vegetable life on the globe. These giants of the forest stand in the valleys nestled in this chain of mountains at an elevation of from four thousand to five thousand feet above the sea; and as no vegetable life exists in this range above nine thousand feet altitude, their tops are much below that range. There are seven distinct groups of these mammoth trees-three in Mariposa county, two in Tulare, and one each in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties. The group in the latter county was the first discovered, |