JOG PACIFIC STATES FLORAL CONGRESS. 



of snowy mountains alternating with plains, there is a limited annual 

 rainfall and a long, dry season. In Madrid the rainfall is fifteen 

 inches; in the more southern Murcia, fourteen inches, which is about 

 equal to that in the middle portion of our Santa Clara Valley, hi. 

 middle and southern California the forests are largely confined to the 

 elevated portions of the mountains, as the former forests of Spain were, 

 while the valleys below are broad plains, capable of high cultivation, 

 if supplied with water for irrigation, but half way desert unless so 

 supplied. 



Spain has a toal area of 123,000,000 acres, of which only 7,500,000, 



one-sixteenth of its total area, mostly in the north, can now be 



reckoned as forest. In California, with a total area of 100,000,000 

 acres, 32,000,000, north of the Tehachapi Mountains, have been esti- 

 mated as original forest. As some of the mountain land in southern 

 California is well forested, we may assume that one-third of the state 

 was originally covered with virgin forests. 



But if these are being decimated at the rate of 050,000,000 feet of 

 lumber annually, and no attempt made to restore the growth over any 

 of this tract, how soon will the boasted one-third forest area approach 

 the one-sixteenth area of modern Spain ? How soon, indeed, in that 

 event, would the rivers from our Sierra Xevada and Sierra Morena go 

 dry, and the future historian of California say, as he has said of 

 Spain, "With the destruction of her woods and the failure to reforest, 

 began the decadence of California" ! He would certainly add that the 

 reproach to California was far greater than to Spain, inasmuch as 

 the latter sinned in ignorance of the laws of forest beneficence, and 

 destroyed but two or three species of common-place coniferous trees r 

 while California ignored the testimony of a century as to the impor- 

 tance of forest-clad mountains in a semi-arid climate, and, moreover, 

 stupidly destroyed forests of three of the most splendid conifers the 

 world has ever seen, besides a dozen species that in any other country 

 would be above the common-place. 



I do not believe this reflection will ever be made, however. Private 

 interest has been destructively active, chiefly in the north. Our alma 

 mater, the United States of America, has kindly and judiciously re- 

 served above 9,000,000 acres of forest. 'land in the middle and south 

 as a heritage, against the day when her beloved daughter, California, 

 shall really come of age; in this she has included several of the best 

 groves of Sequoia gigantea, California herself has shown foresight 

 befitting the native alertness and cleverness of her people, by a generous 

 appropriation to establish the beginnings of a park among the red- 

 woods of the Santa Cruz Mountains, that shall preserve at least a 

 portion of that noble species in all its pristine glory, and bring honor 

 to the state. 



