792 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Photo by Neal T. Childs. 





A Worn Out Meadow. 



THIS IS NOW COVERED WITH SAGE BRUSH. JUNIPER AND YELLOW PINE. THIS IS A PROBLEM FOR THE FORESTER TO 



SOLVE. SHALL THE MEADOW BE IRRIGATED AND MAINTAINED AS GRAZING LAND, OR SHALL IT BE 



ALLOWED TO REVERT TO A FOREST AND BECOME A TIMBER PRODUCING UNIT? 



soil by a meadow stream cutting back. 

 This may be prevented, if taken early, 

 by proper diversion, riprapping, and 

 damming. The higher meadows will 

 never be agricultural ground because 

 of frequent frosts. 



In addition to the cattle and horses 

 that one sees in nearly every meadow, 

 there is much wild life. Deer frequently 

 graze along the marsh stringers in 

 search of succulent plants. Occasionally 

 a bear hunting ants or honey will 

 blunder into a meadow. Of small 

 mammals there are numbers, such as 

 the woodchucks (ground bears), goph- 

 ers, ground squirrels, and badgers who 

 find good burrowing places in the soft 

 soil. Grey squirrels, douglas squirrels, 

 and chipmunks scamper about the 

 edges of every meadow. 



Of birds there are many, attracted by 

 water and the abundant insect life that 

 swarms in every meadow. Perhaps the 

 most common bird is the Western 

 robin. Robins in flocks of a half dozen 

 or more hop about on these forest lawns 

 as much at home as their eastern 

 cousins in a well-kept park. Swallows 

 are frequently seen skimming the sur- 

 face of the larger meadows. The great 

 grey marsh hawk finds good hunting 



along the little swales of meadow 

 brooks. The beautiful mountain quail 

 are often seen trotting in and out of 

 the scrub on the borders of the meadows, 

 while a heterogeneous crowd of wood- 

 peckers, creepers, warblers and other 

 industrious entomologists flit among the 

 fringing pines at the meadow's edge. 



To the student of evolutionary geol- 

 ogy and physiography, the mountain 

 meadows are as a fascinating serial 

 story. Each meadow is a chapter in 

 that story that begins back in the Ice 

 Age and comes down to the present 

 day. One may lead his pack train over 

 a trail of broken granite to some lonely 

 cirque high on the shoulder of the great 

 Sierra. There he may pitch his tent 

 on a lichen floor close to a mountain 

 tarn in which no fish swim and along 

 whose shore an ancient wall of ice adds 

 drop by drop its grudging toll of crystal 

 water. This glacier lake over whose 

 surface no birds skim or insects hum 

 and whose stillness is as the stillness of 

 the eternal, is the forerunner of a 

 mountain meadow. 



To prove the case, the traveller may 

 drop down a thousand feet and tramp 

 over a springy lichen-covered bog, once 

 the bed of a glacier lake. Further down 



