"A tree surgeon doesn't help so much," put in McGinnis, "the timber is niver worth a whoop!"
"There you go again," said the head of the forest, "there's other things to be thought of besides timber." He turned to the boy. "You don't know the trees of the Sierras, I suppose?"
"I think I know them pretty well now," answered Wilbur. "I had to learn a lot about them at school, and then Rifle-Eye has been giving me pointers the last few days."
"What's the difference between a yellow pine and a sugar pine?" queried the Supervisor.
"Sugar pine wood is white and soft," said the boy, "yellow pine is hard, harder than any other pine except the long-leaf variety."
"That's right enough. But how are you going to tell them when standing?"
Wilbur thought for a moment.
"I should think," he said, "that the yellow pine is a so much bigger tree as a rule that you could tell it by that alone. But I suppose a younger yellow pine might look like a sugar. The leaves would help, though, because I should think the sugar, like most of the soft pines, has its leaves in clusters of five in a sheath, and the yellow being a hard pine, has them in bundles of three."
"How about the bark?"
"Sugar pine bark is smoother," said the boy.