76 ERYTHEA. 
tional investigations. It is not, however, the first occasion 
at the name of a department of science has been used to 
secure appropriations from the State and Nation for pur- 
poses altogether foreign to those for which it was intended. 
Tue Sierra Club of San Francisco promises to become a 
large and powerful organization. Its objects are sufficiently 
comprehensive to allow it to aid in a practical and important 
work—that of protecting the forests of the High Sierra. In 
these Sierra forests are the groves of “Big Trees” that long 
ago gave a world-wide fame to the vegetation of California. 
It is not uncommon for travelers to observe that the trunks 
of the sequoias have been charred from recent fires caused 
chiefly by careless hunters and camping parties or destruc- 
tive stockmen. The writer on a visit to the Merced Grove 
found the largest trees on fire. Many members of the club 
who annually visit the High Sierras would consent to be 
armed with the authority of the organization to aid them in 
enforcing the laws existing against vandal recklessness. 
The Honorable 8. Curyton Hastines, a prominent Cali- 
fornian, whose zeal and liberality furnished the means for 
publishing the second volume of the Botany of the State 
Geological Survey, died in San Francisco on the twentieth 
of last month, at the age of seventy-nine years. A genus 
Hastingsia was dedicated to him by the late Sereno Watson, 
in the volume aforenamed; but, like several other of the 
Watsonian liliaceous genera, it does not meet with general 
recognition; the species being restored to Schcenolirion. 
