Page:Memoir of a tour to northern Mexico.djvu/103

Rh cones, resemble the common white pine of the north, but the cones are two or three times as large, not to speak of the other differences. It only grows on the highest mountains of this region, of about 8,000 feet elevation, and attains the height of 100 to 130 feet.

Pinus macrophylla, another inhabitant of the higher mountains of Chihuahua, is more common than the last; like it, it closely resembles a well-known species of the United States, P. australis, from which it differs by its short cones, which have on each scale a mammillary recurved tubercle, and by having the leaves not only in threes, but ;ilso in fours and even in fives. It may be near P. occidentalis of the interior of Mexico, but that has the regularly five leaves in each sheath.

Pinus Chihuahuana, is the common pine of Cosihuiriachi and the mountains of Chihuahua, in general at an elevation of about 7,000 feet. It grows only 30 to 50 feet high, and resembles somewhat P. variabilis, though sufficiently distinct. Dr. Wislizenus was unable to obtain specimens of a fourth pine, which is said to grow on the still higher mountains to the west, near Jesus-Maria, bearing cones 15 or 18 inches in length.

On the highest peaks in this region a species of Arbutus was found, which the inhabitants call Matronia; it is a small tree with a smooth, red bark, bearing in November and December red edible berries. If it is at all distinct from A. Menziesii, Pursh, of the northwest coast, which it closely resembles, it ought, from the color of its bark, bear the name of