The top of the tree where there is plenty
of space is broad and bossy, with a dense covering of shining leaves,
making delightful canopies, the complicated system of gray, interlacing,
arching branches as seen from beneath being exceedingly rich and
picturesque. No other tree that I know dwarfs so regularly and
completely as this under changes of climate due to changes in elevation.
At the foot of a canon 4000 feet above the sea you may find magnificent
specimens of this oak fifty feet high, with craggy, bulging trunks, five
to seven feet in diameter, and at the head of the canon, 2500 feet
higher, a dense, soft, low, shrubby growth of the same species, while
all the way up the canon between these extremes of size and habit a
perfect gradation may be traced. The largest I have seen was fifty feet
high, eight feet in diameter, and about seventy-five feet in spread. The
trunk was all knots and buttresses, gray like granite, and about as
angular and irregular as the boulders on which it was growing--a type of
steadfast, unwedgeable strength.
CHAPTER IX
THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL
(_Sciurus Douglasii_)
The Douglas Squirrel is by far the most interesting and influential of
the California sciuridae, surpassing every other species in force of
character, numbers, and extent of range, and in the amount of influence
he brings to bear upon the health and distribution of the vast forests
he inhabits.
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