140 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



TREES AND SHRUBBERY OF THE STATE. 



BY A. KELLOGG, 



ONE OF THE BOTANISTS TO THE BOARD, 



During the past year the ceaseless calls on our time and means have 

 precluded those extensive observations and ample illustrations we so 

 ardently desire to see adopted, and fondly hope to make in future. 



Experience and observation prove that no country can long maintain 

 a high degree of j^rosperous fertility without forest trees and shrubbery. 

 It would be easy to show by historical records the unqualified truth of 

 this remark, did not our own observation daily bring it home to us with 

 continual emphasis. Besides the salubrity to which they conduce, and 

 the protection the}^ afford from the extremes of clihiatic influences, no 

 springs nor streams, large or small, can be counted upon as permanent 

 for commerce, manufactures, agricultural resources, or daily domestic use 

 and comfort, if these first principles of a country's resources are ignored. 

 We therefore think it pertinent to our introductory to these few short 

 practical paragraphs on the trees and shrubs, or more obviously useful 

 and ornamental plants of California, to most emphatically call the public 

 attention to the subject. In the almost utter ignorance of the great mass 

 of mankind, it is a merciful dispensation of the order of Divine Provi- 

 dence, that in a comparatively bare countr}^ like many portions of our 

 own, when the land is i-edeemed from its wild condition, trees and shrubs 

 usually spring up, and the volunteer needs nothing more than a kindly 

 welcome and reasonable and willing hands to cherish their beneficent 

 mission. We have often led the way, as well as followed, the tide of 

 pioneers; and also revisited our resident scenes of former vandalism, 

 after the lapse of years, when, alas! it needed no nice observation to 

 mark the old ruined mill. hi<rh and dry ; or the hui-'e britloe, lookin"- like 

 a lofty monument of folly, ramiDant in its ruin like one riotously drunk 

 with manita mushroom, lea])ing in his illusion a thread or straw, as if it 

 were a fallen monster of the forest. Thus have we seen, a thousand 

 times, as any one may see in less than a day's ride, like ruins spanning 

 little dirty sluggish rills one can step over, where onl}- a few short years 

 before it was almost dangerous to lord ! Do you ask why, when that 

 old signifitant, self-ruined mill stands there — the death's head and cross 



