Vol. n Hall. — Botanical Surrey of San Jacinto Mountain. 25 



It is interesting' to note the stations within the state reported 

 for this species, the home of which is in the Rocky Mountains. 

 It has been found on the Grapevine and Panimint Mountains in 

 the eastern part of California,* on the Inyo Mountains, t in the 

 San Bernardino t and San Jacinto Mountains, and on the very 

 summit of Santa Rosa Peak,§ while in the Sierra Nevadas it has 

 been found only at a few isolated stations, mostly on the eastern 

 side and toward the southern end of the range.t T^ seems prob- 

 able, therefore, that it has entered Southern California by way of 

 the desert ranges, the highest peaks of which served as stepping- 

 stones between the Rocky Mountains and the higher ranges of 

 middle and Southern California. 



Forest Fires and Forest Protection. — There has been, in 

 recent years, no serious tire wdthin the true forest belt of San 

 Jacinto Mountain, although several thousand a res of chaparral 

 covered slopes of the south side were swept by tire during the 

 summer of 1900, and in July, 1901, another fire burned over some 

 3000 acres of heavily timbered land on the north slope of Fullers 

 Ridge, which did not, however, kill many of the sound trees and 

 was prevented, by the forest rangers and others, from extending 

 to other parts of the mountain. While evidences of previous 

 fires are present everywhere in the forest belt, but little damage 

 was done to sound timber, and the greatest danger now seems to 

 lie in the killing of young trees and in the destruction of the 

 chaparral of the lower slopes.il 



The worst enemy the forests have had has been, not the for- 

 est fire, but the sawmill. Many a pine- clad slope has been 

 stripped of its best trees in order that they might be converted 

 into lumber, and a very inferior quality of lumber at that. In 

 the vicinity of Strawberry Valley about 4000 acres have been 

 lumbered over and perhaps 2500 acres lying in the basin just 



* Coville, Contr. U. S. Nat. Herb. iv. 221 (1893). 



t Englemann, Bot. Calif, ii. 124 (1880.) 



t Leiberg, in Nineteenth Aumial Rept. U. S. G. S. :Hii (1899). 



§ Santa Rosa Peak has an altitude of 8720 ft. and lies 25 miles to the southeast 

 of San Jacinto Peak. Plnus flexilis was first found on its summit by W. L. Jepson, 

 in May, 1901. 



II For an account of the San Jacinto Forest Reserve see the Twentieth Annual 

 Report of the U. S. Geological Survey, part 5, p. 455, et. seq. (1900). 



Bot— 3. 



