The incense cedar is the only representative of its genus in the United States. It has many relatives in the pine family, but no near ones. Its kin are natives of Formosa, China, New Zealand, New Guinea, and Patagonia. The name incense cedar refers to the odor of the wood rather than of the leaves. Those who work with freshly cut wood are liable to attacks of headache, due to the odor; but some men are not affected by it. The forest grown tree is of beautiful proportions. Unless much crowded for room, it is a tall, graceful cone, the branches drooping slightly, and forming thick masses. In the Sierra Nevada mountains, within the range of this cedar, the winter snows are very heavy. It is not unusual for two or three feet of very wet snow to fall in a single day. The incense cedar’s drooping branches shed the snow like a tent roof, and a limb broken or seriously deformed by weight of snow is seldom seen. Deer and other wild animals, when surprised by a heavy fall of snow, seek the shelter of an incense cedar, if one can be found, and there lie in security until the storm passes. It is a tree which does fairly well in cultivation, and several varieties have been developed. It lives through the cold of a New England winter. Its cones are about three-fourths inch in length, and ripen in the autumn. Incense cedar has filled an important place in the development of the great central valley of California, where it has supplied more fence posts than any other tree. Posts of redwood have been its chief competitor, but generally the region has been divided, and each tree has supplied its part. The redwood’s field has been the coast, the cedar’s the inland valley within reach of the Sierras. It has been nothing unusual for ranchmen to haul cedar posts on wagons forty or fifty miles. The manufacture of posts from incense cedar has entailed an enormous waste of timber. The thick sapwood is not wanted, and in the process of converting a trunk into posts, the woodsman first splits off the sap and throws it away. In trunks of small and medium size, the sapwood may amount to more than the heartwood, and is a total loss. The tree’s bark is thick and stringy, and it is generally wasted; but in some instances it is used as a surface dressing for mountain roads. It wears to pieces and becomes a pulpy mass, and it protects the surface of the road from excessive wear, and from washing in time of heavy rain.