WHAT THE BIG TREES MAY DO FOR CALIFORNIA. 105 



spirit and a more intelligent understanding of the value of careful 

 forest administration than any other section of the west. 



We have endeavored to look at this question broadly. We have 

 found in one section of this state the climatic conditions are such that, 

 as in northern Europe or Canada, either agriculture or lumbering may 

 be carried on profitably; in another, only the lumber industry need be 

 considered; in another (of the greatest importance to us), the great 

 interests of agriculture, mining, motive power, and municipal water 

 supply demand that, while the forest may be used for naval stores and 

 limited lumbering, it should primarily and forever be dedicated to 

 stream-protection. We find that in the south the forests should never 

 be lumbered or pastured, but carefully protected, nurtured, and ex- 

 tended; indeed, the southern California!! might conform to a more 

 useless cult than tree-planting, and to a worse religion than tree- 

 worship. Finally, we discover that our state and national interests 

 are suffering, not because of the lack of intelligent and educated admin- 

 istrators, but because legislative apathy neglects to place its forest, 

 domain in the hands of these administrators. 



It is not less your duty than mine to labor to bring about a satis- 

 factory solution to this question, One of the most far-reaching and 

 important of those which concern the west. We are all laymen, work- 

 ing, I hope, with the instincts of true citizenship. It may be years 

 before the true adjustment of the most varied, the most beautiful, and 

 the most imposing coniferous forests in the world, to the material and 

 spiritual interests of our people, can be brought about. I think none 

 of us have failed to make the most indifferent person, be he citizen or 

 traveler, a friend of our woods, by taking him among their solemn 

 shades, where he can feel the grandeur of size, the majesty of height, 

 the far lapse of time, as he counts century upon century of rings in 

 the trunk of some fallen tree. We have learned of recent years that 

 our woods have great and before unsuspected potential relations to 

 our prosperity. They will keep our springs sparkling, our hills from 

 the cloudburst, our rivers full in summer-time, and bring plenty to 

 our treasuries. We have long valued them for their lumber products, 

 and for their utility in our mining operations, but they constitute one 

 source of advantage which Californians have been slow in suspecting. 

 I refer to their attractiveness to the sightseer and the traveler. 



I am not particularly anxious that we preserve our great trees, that 

 some individual or some company may gather a harvest of coin by 

 entertaining the stranger or piloting him to the patriarchs 'of the for- 

 est, although that may have its material advantage to the community. 

 But I propose, in the interests of a higher and broader policy, that 

 which would seek the preservation and proper use of our whole forest, 



