224 



THE FORESTER. 



September, 



you,' I replied. ' You are now standing 

 beside one of them, and it is in full bloom ; 

 look up.' And I pointed to a blossom- 

 laded Abies magnified, about a hundred 

 and twenty feet high, in front of the house, 

 used as a hitching post. And seeing its 

 beauty for the first time, their wonder 

 could hardly have been greater or more 

 sincere had their Silver Fir hitching post 

 blossomed for them at that moment as 

 suddenly as Aaron's rod. 



" The Mountain Hemlock extends an al- 

 most continuous belt along the Sierra and 

 northern ranges to Prince William's Sound, 

 accompanied part of the way by the Pines ; 

 our two Silver Firs, to Mount Shasta, 

 thence the Fir belt is continued through 

 Oregon, Washington and British Colum- 

 bia by four other species, Abies nobilis, 

 grandis, amabilis and lasiocarpa ; while 

 the magnificent Sitka Spruce, with large, 

 bright purple flowers, adorns the coast re- 

 gion from California to Cook's Inlet and 

 Kadiak. All these interblending form one 

 flowery belt one garden blooming in 

 June, rocking its myriad spires in the 

 hearty weather, bowing and swirling, en- 

 joying clouds and winds and filling them 

 with balsam ; covering thousands of miles 

 of the wildest mountains, clothing the long 

 slopes by the sea, crowning bluffs and 

 headlands and innumerable islands, and 

 fringing the banks of the glaciers, one 

 wild wavering belt of the noblest flowers in 

 the world worth a lifetime of love work to 

 know it.".-John Muir, " The Wild Gar- 

 driis of the Yosemite Park" in the Atlan- 

 tic Monthly for August. 



water any way.' The deed may call for 

 the water, but the rancher may call for it 

 in vain." 



The 

 Lumber Transgressor. 



Striking Case of 

 Indifference. 



In its article on the 

 forest fire which re- 

 cently started in the 

 Santa Anita Canyons the WesternGraphic 

 \ striking case of total indifference 

 \ MS manifested by an orchardist who owns 

 a finr orange orchard right at the mouth of 

 Santa Anita. The flames were run- 

 ning up the mountain in plain sight, and 

 vhen asked why he was not fighting the 

 fire, and tning to save his water supply, 

 IK- calmly remarked that ' it is too hot to 

 fire, and my deed called for so much 



Under the title, 



" The Wav of the 

 v ^ 



Lumber I ransgress- 

 or," the American Lumberman published 

 a letter from its Duluth correspondent in 

 the issue of July 28th, from which the 

 following is quoted : 



" If the auditors of the State of Minne- 

 sota during the past ten years had been as 

 active in watching the interests of the 

 State as is the present auditor, Minnesota 

 would to-day be millions of dollars better 

 off. If the present auditor had been in 

 office from 1880 to 1890 the State's gen- 

 eral and State school funds would have 

 been incalculably larger, and hundreds of 

 men would not now have the sin of whole- 

 sale theft upon their consciences. The 

 work of Auditor R. C. Dunn in the Du- 

 luth district the past winter and spring 

 alone is evidence enough of all this. He 

 has saved the State in the past few months 

 a share of its diminished resources that 

 represents a proportion of far more than a 

 million dollars on the Pine timber it held 

 ten years ago. 



"A few of these instances of saving will 

 be interesting. A heavy Cedar tie and 

 supply firm went into the woods down the 

 north shore of Lake Superior last fall and 

 contracted with settlers for the cutting of 

 all ties, etc., on three sections of State 

 land. The company had not a shadow of 

 title to the land, and knew it, but its Du- 

 luth representative made contracts in his 

 own name, representing to the choppers 

 that he was the agent for the lands, and 

 they went in and cut some 44,000 ties, 

 relying upon his statements. The State 

 heard of it and waited. The contracting 

 firm settled with the tie makers under its 

 agreement and then brought the ties to 

 this city, where they were taken in charge 

 by the State auditor. A settlement has 

 just been made with the firm, by which it 

 pays 15 cents stumpage for every tie, good 

 and culls, in the entire lot. Fifteen cents 

 is about three times what the stumpage 

 would have sold for, good ties alone, in 



