Popular Studies of California Wild Flowers 121 



an editorial in one of the San Francisco papers about two years ago to this 

 effect. 



I believe there should be legislation passed making it an offense over and 

 above a trespass to take any wild flowers, Christmas berries, ferns or other 

 decorative vegetation from any property without specific permission of the 

 owner, and furthermore to protect all such things along county roads and 

 State highways. The laws against trespass can never be enforced and special 

 legislation is needed in this particular the same as in game preservation. 



The difference between game and these other things is that the game 

 under the old English tradition is the property of the State, whereas the 

 flowers, etcetera, belong to the owners of the land. So in drafting legislation, 

 this should be carefully taken into account. I shall try to see what can be 

 done to prevent such depredation in the Tamalpais region, especially on the 

 grounds of the Public Water District. Rigid attention is paid to preservation 

 in Muir Woods and the mountain railway has usually assisted in preventing 

 the carrying out of such plunder. 



The Christmas berry and fern fiends are a pestilence on our home place 

 at the holiday time. 



You are starting a splendid movement and should get a lot of assistance 

 through the aid of the Sierra Club, Tamalpais Conservation Club, the Alpine 

 Club and other out-door associations. 



Yours truly, 



WILLIAM KENT. 



BERKELEY, DECEMBER 3, 1919. 



I agree with you that something should speedily be done to save from 

 practical extermination, along our highways and roadsides, some of the highly 

 decorative flowering shrubs and plants that are one of the glories of Cali- 

 fornia scenery. This is especially true of the Christmas Berry or Toyon 

 (Heteromeles) and the California wild currant. The number and omni- 

 presence of automobiles on all roads have increased the ensuing devastation 

 twenty-fold within the last ten years and unless legal measures are taken 

 soon the next generation will know only from hearsay the loveliness of wild 

 tangle-brush roadsides of California in spring and autumn. 



A good part of the destruction is to be charged to foreigners, who go 

 out with trucks to strip the hillsides for purely commercial purposes at the 

 holiday season. There is no more reason for allowing this class of persons 

 to enrich itself by robbing a community of its commonwealth of beautiful 

 shrubs and plants, than in allowing them to smother the songs of thrushes 

 and meadow larks by slaughtering them for the market. We punish the 

 latter, as an act of injury to the community, and plant robbers for the market 

 should be treated in the same manner. 



It has long beee customary in Europe to gauge the level of a country's 

 culture by the foresight with which it has preserved and fostered the natural 

 human instinct for landscape beauty, and tourists, it was afterwards found, 

 speedily and willingly brought their tributes of gold to the fortunate culti- 

 vators of a beautiful natural environment. We do not build Parthenons and 

 preserve Yosemite for the lining of our pocketbooks, but because they min- 

 ister strength, nobility, and refinement to the human spirit. Yet no com- 

 munity should overlook the fact that the enhancement of its landscape beauty 

 adds potentially to its material wealth, and that the diminution of its out- 

 door art assets entails a corresponding loss in dollars and cents. 



Wishing you all possible success, I am, 



Sincerely yours, 



WILLIAM FREDERIC BADE, 



President, Sierra Club. 



DECEMBER 20, 1919. 



Though the Tamalpais Conservation Club has been organized primarily 

 to conserve things animate and inanimate in Marin County, California, and 

 particularly preserve the scenic beauties and fauna of Mt. Tamalpais, its 

 spurs and slopes, it of course is in sympathy with the wider conservation 

 movement. 



