THE NATIONAL PARKS 531 



THE NATIONAL PAEKS FEOM THE SCIEXTIFIC AND 



EDUCATIONAL SIDE 



Br LAURENCE F. SCHMECKEBIER 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 



THE passage of the act of Congress creating the first national park 

 — the Yellowstone — was due in large measure to the interest 

 and activity of the chief geologist of the Geological and Geographical 

 Survey of the Territories, Dr. F. V. Hayden, and in the forty years 

 that have elapsed since the creation of that great reservation the 

 wonders of the national parks have claimed the attention of workers in 

 every branch of science. As might naturally be expected, the more 

 extensive scientific work in the parks has been in the field of geology 

 and its allied sciences, because the wonderful forms of nature which 

 have been the main factors in inducing congress to create these parks 

 are the result of forces whose study falls particularly within the realm 

 of geology. In the Yellowstone Park the geysers, the hot springs, the 

 terraces, the fossil forests and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone 

 River present absorbing and instructive geologic problems; in the 

 Mount Eainier National Park is one of the largest glacial systems 

 known to radiate from a single peak; in the Crater Lake National Park 

 is the only lake in the United States that is situated in the caldera 

 of an extinct volcano; in the Yosemite National Park the great gorge 

 of Yosemite Valley presents perplexing problems to the student of 

 phj^siography and widely divergent theories have been advanced re- 

 garding its origin; in the Glacier National Park are over 80 glaciers 

 varying from a few yards to five acres in extent that have received 

 practically no attention from the student of glaciology. But geology 

 can not lay claim to the entire field. At the Hot Springs Eeservation 

 of Arkansas the healing waters are of great interest to the chemist and 

 physician as well as to the geologist, and in the Mesa Verde National 

 Park the remains of the vanished race of cliff dwellers offer a prolific 

 field to the ethnologist and anthropologist. In the Yellowstone, Mount 

 Eainier, Crater, Yosemite, Sequoia and General Grant Parks there is a 

 prolific flora of native trees, flowers and grasses such as can be seen in 

 few places in the west. In all the parks the protection of the game 

 affords opportunity for the study of many faunal species that have been 

 almost exterminated except in these reservations. 



The scientific bureaus of the government and various learned so- 

 cieties have issued publications on the parks that are accessible to the 



