"Enter this wild wood, and view the haunts of nature-----".

At the northern boundary of the Sierra Nevadas, Mount Shasta, the peak of eternal snows, looks proudly down from its elevation of 14,440 feet above the sea level. Vast armies of noble forest-trees rally at its base, or clamber up its volcanic slopes, to the limit of perpetual snow, as though in defense of their hoary-headed monarch. Mile after mile they stretch away in all their primeval grandeur, clothing valleys and sunny uplands, fringing long ranges of purple mountains, and finding their limit only where they meet the alkali plains, covered with juniper and sage-bush ; or where the leveling axe has thinned their ranks to give place to broad, fertile farms and picturesque villages ; or to feed the relentless iron horse, which shrieks and whistles through echoing canons and romantic gorges, where the Indian once held undisputed sway, and the bear and the deer roamed free and unmolested.

Loftiest of the woodland sentinels is the towering sugar pine (P. Lamberliana), tallest of its tribe, its average height being over 200 feet. The foliage is of a delicate character, and the cones are often more than a foot in length. Its trunk exudes a sweet yellowish gum, which granulates on reaching the outside air, forming a deposit of sugar, slightly resinous to the taste. Groves of hardy yellow-pines abound on every side, symmetrical, graceful, straight as masts, the haunt of the clamorous blue-jay and the fleet-footed squirrel; the store-house of the provident and artistic woodpecker. Both trees furnish valuable timber for building purposes. Among other species are the swamp-pine, a tree of medium height, flourishing in marshy situations, the cembra-pine (P. flexilis albicaulis ?), a stunted tree with a white trunk, found near the summit of the mountain ; and Fremont's nut-pine, the cones of which yield large nuts, much prized as food by the Digger Indians.

Beside these are also the odorous junipers, the red, black and silver firs, and mighty cedars, hung with mistletoe, stretching their gaunt, gnarled limbs in air, as though weary with the weight of years; the hemlock-spruce, the cypress, groups of evergreen oaks, wind-swept scrub-oaks, the black and the white oaks.

Here are decayed trees, mantled with Spanish moss; others bent and mis-shapen with the burden of December snows or blasted from crest to root by shafts of lightning. Here, again the fire fiend has been at work, destroying in a few hours the growth of centuries, leaving charred stumps, smouldering logs, withered boughs, ashes, and blackened ruins in its wake.

Prostrate upon the springing aromatic floor, bestrewn with patches of "squaw's-carpet," a tough, tenacious little vine, with tiny, serrated leaves, lie giant trunks, four or five feet in diamater, half buried in pine-cones, with bare dry roots and splitting bark, their hollow interiors affording cosy lodgings for the saucy chipmunks, racing fearlessly along their rugged highways. Through a network of shifting boughs, the checkered sunlight falls upon " Father, thy hand hath reared these venerable columns; Thou didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down upon this naked earth, And, forthwith, rose all these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun, [budded ; and shook their green leaves in thy breeze, And shot toward Heaven".

On the banks of the wildly beautiful Sacramento and McCloud rivers, and on the margins of clear, pebble-bottomed creeks, whose sources are in the huge glaciers, high up on the side of the mountain, flourish in lavish profusion, the California maple, the alder, the birch, laurel, hazlenut, chestnut, brook-willow, wild lilac, dog-wood, and the thorn bush, white with flowers in the springtime, but laden, in the autumn, with black, mealy berries. The woolly clematis festoons itself impartially from tree to tree; and the long untrained boughs of the sweet-briar wave gently in the summer breeze. The saxifrage dips its broad, bright leaves in the river's sparkling tide, with hosts of velvety bulrushes ; while half-submerged logs and boulders furnish a foothold to dainty lichens, delicate ferns and mosses. In this neighborhood, too, we find the pennyroyal, the bergamot, and the sweet herb, or "yerba buena;" the wild forget-me-not, musk, geranium, coleus and bignonia ; the American holly ; wild grape-vines, and the blue violet perfuming the air with its sweetness.

Among native fruits are the elder, with its drooping clusters of azure berries; the long currant-like bunches of the puckering "choke-cherry;" volunteer orchards of bushy, wild-plum trees, bearing a small and not unpleasantly bitter fruit; the bristling spines of the wild gooseberry, thimbleberries, iling blackberry vines, and little which cover the ground to so great ey give their name to one of the :he surrounding country. >one of the principal industries of amply does nature reward the y farmers dwelling in the ramb-uses, smothered in luxuriant hop vines, and shaded by such trees as the Balm of Gilead, the cottonwood and the lofty silver-poplar flashing its leaves in the sunshine. One may stand waist-deep in rolling billows of blossoming red-clover, timothy and red-top; or refresh the eye by gazing over long stretches of emerald alfalfa. Truly **the harvest is plentiful." The great barns seem fairly bursting with their fragrant storage, flanked by immense hay-stacks, in the adjoining fields. So fertile is the soil that in the space of eleven years, one pound of red-clover seed planted itself over an area of sixty acres.

The assistance of irrigation is obtained by means of ditches dug from the creeks or springs, and the water is turned on in any direction, or off again, at pleasure, by dams and flood-gates. This artificial method is imperative, there being little or no rain before November, with the exception of occasional squalls in July or August.

Orchard fruits are unsurpassed in size and quality as well as quantity, one orchard in Scott's Valley boasting no less than 5,000 apple trees.

The pride of the meadows is the "Shasta lily," a stately, wild tiger-lily, in two varieties; a smaller in shades of orange and black and a larger in black and white, either fitted to grace the finest of city greenhouses. Scarcely less brilliant is a flame-colored plume locally known as the Indian's paint-brush.

Through a wealth of flowering grasses and nodding gypsophyllums appear the tall stalks of the evening primrose; or the delicate umbelliferous blossoms of the wild carrot, while cardinal flowers, asters, blue-bells, eschscholtzias, columbine, larkspur wintergreen and dandelions run riot everywhere.

Over the old rustic worm-fence the wild-rye nods gaily to clumps of shining golden-rod, which guard the country road-side in company with the stiff, flannelly mullein, and the milk-weed, with its silken, winged seeds, so marvelously packed away in their unpretentious pods.

Sublime as are the forests, what can compare with the beauty of the sunny, open meadows, musical with bird-song, flecked by shadows from passing clouds, dotted with thousands of wild-flowers; the paradise of the hunter of four-leaved clovers, the playground of myriads of bees and gay colored butterflies, the nesting place of the meadow-lark and the field-mouse, the refuge of the timorous quail, and the hab. itat of the cricket and grasshopper; and over all blowing the exhilarating mountain wind, bearing messages from the crimson snow plant, on the frozen highlands, and laden with the balsam of the forest.

"As if from Heaven's wide open gates did flow, Health and refreshment on the world below".

Bertha F. Herrick.