The American Botanist 



VOL. XVIII JOLIET, ILL., MAY, 1912 No. 2 



%/^ough winds do shake the darling buds of >^jLai/, 



-/7/if) summer s lease has all too short a date: 



Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines, 



•^nd often is his gold complexion dimmed; 



^^nd every fair from fair sometimes declines; 



i/jy chance of nature' s changing course untrimmed, 



— Shakespere. 



RED SNOW. 



By S. B. Parish. 

 13 ED snow was abundant last summer on the hio-h peaks 

 •*■ ^ above the Yosemite Valle}^ so that the members of the 

 Sierra Club, who were enjoying a strenuous outing in that 

 alpine region, had an opportunity of observing a phenomenon 

 rare below the Arctic Circle. It is, indeed, the first time that 

 it has been reported from a latitude so far south on this con- 

 tinent. One of tbe club members, Mr. Ford A. Carpenter, of 

 San Diego, was fortunate in taking the first autochrome photo- 

 graph that has ever been made of such a snow field, and it has 

 been handsomely reproduced in a recent number of the Pro- 

 ceedings of the Natural History Society of that place. The 

 Luminere process was used, in which the sun itself records the 

 various colors of the different objects in the scene, and faith- 

 fully portrays them in the reproduction. 



Perhaps it is not generally known that it is not the snow 

 itself that is red, or stained red, but that the color is due to a 

 plant which grows in the snow, and is of a red color; so that 

 the snow appears red, very much as a meadow appears green 

 because of the grass which grows on it, or a poppy field yellow 

 from the abundant blossoms. 



Vfcrfl .<..-* 



