Reports of explorations and surveys, to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean: Vol. 6, Pt. 3

BOTANY.
uniformity; sugar and yellow pine, with the western balsam fir, and Libocedrus, of which the
eye may take in at a glance even hundreds which reach or exceed the utmost capacity of the
mills, and many which would furnish sticks a yard square and a hundred feet long, as straight
as an arrow, and almost without a knot.
The resin of the sugar pine is less abundant than that of the P. ponderosa, is white or trans
parent like that of P. strobus. That which exudes from partially burnt trees, for the most part,
loses its terebinthine taste and smell, and acquires a sweetness nearly equal to that of sugar.
This sugar gives the tree its name, and is sometimes used for sweetening food. It has, however,
decided cathartic properties, and is oftener used by the frontier men as a medicine than a condiment. Its resemblance in taste, appearance, and properties to manna, strikes one instantly; and
but for a slight terebinthine flavor, it might be substituted for that drug, without the knowledge of the druggist or physician, its physical and medical properties are so very like.
PINuS CLEMBROIDES. The American Cembra pine.
P. CiEaROIDES, Zucc. Jour. Hort. Soc. 1, p. 236.
Fig. 15.
Fig. 15. Cone, leaves, scale, and seed of P. Oenmbroides, natural size.
While exploring the passes of the Cascade mountains, about latitude 44Q north, we first met
with this tree.
We (,.-ossed the mountains several times at an altitude of about 7,000 feet, the line of perpetual
snow. After reaching an altitude of 5,500 feet, among the firs and spruces which cover the
mountain sides began to appear pines of a species then quite new to me. As we ascended we
left b hind us Menzies' and Douglas' spruces, (A4. Menziesii and A4. DZouglasii,) the western
balsa and silver firs, (P. grandis and P. amabilis,) which grow so luxuriantly below, and, at
the he ght of 6,500 feet, found the scattered clusters of trees to be composed of nearly equal
numbers of the pine to which I have alluded, and of a beautiful and then undescribed spruce,
which I have since called 4bies WVilliamsonii. Still higher, at the extreme limit of vegetation,
the bleak and barren surfaces were held by this pine in a possession undisputed by other trees,
but opposed by the rigors of a climate which had bowed it to the ground, forcing it to grow in
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