BIGCONE SPRUCE (_Pseudotsuga macrocarpa_) is of the same genus as Douglas fir and bears much resemblance to it, but is smaller, and its range lies wholly outside that of its northern relative. It is a southern California species, occupying mountain slopes and canyons in Santa Barbara and San Diego counties. It is found from 3,000 to 5,000 feet above sea level. Trees average forty or fifty feet in height and two or three in diameter. The leaves are approximately of the same size as those of Douglas fir; but the cones are much larger, hence the name by which the tree is known. It is called hemlock as often as spruce. The cones are from four to seven inches long, hang down, and usually occupy the topmost branches of trees. The winged seeds are half an inch long. The bark is six inches or less in thickness. The wood is inferior in most ways to that of Douglas fir, lighter, weaker, and less elastic. Its color is reddish brown. It has never contributed much lumber to the market and never will. Its range is local and the form of the tree is not of the best. An occasional log reaches a sawmill, but the principal demand is for fuel. [Illustration] BIGTREE [Illustration: BIGTREE] BIGTREE (_Sequoia Washingtoniana_) Botanists have had a hard time giving this tree a Latin name which will meet the requirements of technical classification, but an English name acceptable everywhere was early found for it--bigtree. No fewer than a dozen names have been proposed by botanists. Most of them attempt to express the idea of vastness or grandeur; but the simple English name comes directly to the point and ends the controversy as far as the common name is concerned. Everything connected with this tree is interesting. Geologically, it is as old as the yellow poplar. There were five species of sequoias in the northern hemisphere, in Europe and America, before the ice age. They grew in the North, nearly to the Arctic circle, at a time when the climate of those regions was milder than it is now. The later advance of the ice southward overwhelmed three species of bigtrees, and pushed two survivors into the region which is now California. These are the bigtree and the redwood. It is not known how long ago it was that the ice sheet did its destructive work, but it antedated human history, and the gigantic trees have been in California since that time. Long after the ice age ceased generally in North America it continued among the high Sierras of California, and the bigtrees to this day give a hint of it in the peculiar outlines of their range. They are scattered north and south along the face of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, a distance of 260 miles, and at elevations from 4,500 to 8,000 feet.