Engelmann spruce forests may be associated with the 10,000-foot level. The blue spruce is very similar, perhaps only a subspecies, but it comes in a little lower. The Engelmann makes a dense forest hardly allowing invaders, but the blue is more tolerant, less austere. It loves the water and is the natural companion of chill, cascading trout streams. Though fond of shadow, it seems to grow equally well where the narrow canyons widen and admit the sunshine upon the tiny meadows of lush grass, cranesbill, velvety red cinquefoils, lupines, and yellow columbines. And when one of these miniature openings is fringed with spruces whose pointed tips rise sharp against a curtain of azure with its white cumulus clouds, there you have the loveliest vista in the mountains. OUR VISIBLE IMPACT ON THE PLANT LIFE Though nature lovers usually find the life zones more fascinating than any other aspect of plants in the mountains, there is one other much more important. It is the misuse, injury, and destruction of native plant life. Because scientists are generally alert to the conservation of what is useful and beautiful in natural resources, I venture to bring up the matter here. A useful case history is provided by Silver City, New Mexico. It was founded in the early seventies as a silver camp, which would fairly guarantee a certain amount of reckless haste and rowdy carelessness. Point two was its location on a foothill watershed only twenty-seven square miles in area. Point three was an extreme concentration of livestock near the town. Point four was the fact that the annual rainfall was crowded mainly into July, August, and a part of September. Mines are naturally users of timber. Obviously, shafts and tunnels have to be timbered. More than that, little smelters nestled back among the hills were also hungry for wood. And since coal was expensive and hard to get, most of the adobe cottages were heated many years by juniper, oak, and piñon firewood. All these matters were naturally, if not actually, inevitable under the circumstances.