Referring to specimens of Pinus ponderosa, page 113, April number, P. ponderosa, sent me by Mr. S. B. Higginson, Gordon, Nebraska, are in no way different from the species as found in the foot hills from New Mexico to Montana. This same tree, as found in California, where it reaches its greatest development, has leaves a foot long, and very large cones. In the foot hills on the the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, and well up into the mountains toward the north, its leaves are from 3 to 9 inches long, according to exposure and quality of soil in which it is growing. I have had three different specimens sent me in the same package, from a gentleman in the Black Hills, as three different species of pines; but they were all the same. The gentleman replied, telling me that I did not know anything about pines.

When exploring in the Black Hills a year or two afterwards, I inquired of gentlemen who were said to know the most about the Black Hills conifers, and was sent to different points to find the different kinds of pines, which went by different names, but found them all to be the same. No wonder they were called by different names, and supposed to be different kinds, for at different ages the tree has a different appearance. We found large forests of tall, slender, blackish-barked trees. Other forests, all of a more spreading habit, with their brown or cinnamon colored bark. Finally, the fine species of pines that we went out to examine, after so many laborious days' travel, all proved to be Pinus ponderosa. This Black Hills country must have been subject to forest fires before the white man entered it, for undoubtedly fires were the cause of these forests being of different ages.

The Black Hills country resembles the hilly part of New England more than any other country I have ever seen, and you can imagine one of these hills having been swept by fire, say twentyfive or thirty years ago, and not a tree left except on a broken spot here and there where the fire could not reach, and all this extent covered with trees of the same age; while beyond the stream, where the fire could not reach, are the older trees, quite different in appearance; for you will bear in mind that in this Black Hills country, or at least in some parts of it, the trees spring up as they do in New England, or in a moist climate, differing wonderfully from Colorado in this respect.

Pinus ponderosa owes its reputation to the California tree, where it is said to produce excellent timber; but the Colorado tree has no such claim. Prof. Sargent and I examined the timber in the carpenter shops in Leadville. In one shop we found some pine lumber that worked nicely, but they called it Chicago pine. That is the name they give the White pine, as it had come from Chicago, and carted up to Leadville after it left the railroad, as the railroad did not reach there at that time. At Deadwood, in the large Homestake mines, they use the ponderosa and give it a poor reputation; but it is the only pine in the Black Hills. Pinus taeda would no more stand the climate in northwest Nebraska and the Black Hills, than a Florida orange tree would stand there; and Pinus mitis browns here every winter, and loses the last year's growth nearly every winter. Pinus ponderosa is a dangerous tree here, as the fungus on the leaves not only disfigures this tree, but "catches on" to the Austrian severely, and on the resinosa to a less extent. We burned every one we had on the place for this reason, and I do not know of a tree left in the west. The largest tree I ever saw under cultivation, was in the Cambridge botanic garden, and it was a miserable tree, with a very unsightly fungus on its trunk.

If it could be grown healthily and thrifty, it would be a beautiful tree, but I do not think it can be on this side of the mountains.

Possibly I am prejudiced against this tree; very likely I am. It has cost me between two and three thousand dollars, and I know I will never get a cent back, and this will prejudice a fellow sometimes. You may know of some ponderosas in the East that are doing well, and making good healthy trees. Waukegan, III.