570 



SCIENCE. 



(Vol,. IT., No. 38. 



extraordinary suction upward, toward tlie chilly crests 

 of that lofty range. 1 remember noticing it nowhere 

 more strongly than on the coast of Sonoma county, 

 Cal., swept by a constant indraught from the Pacific. 



This was the locality of my article in Harper'x 

 mar/azine for January, 1SS3, styled 'In a redwood 

 logging-camp.' In that article (p. 194), afte^ speak- 

 ing of the stiff, erect trunks of tlie Sequoia, as seen 

 inland, I say, "In windy places, like the exposed 

 sea-front, all the boughs are twisted into a single 

 plane landward, and great picturesqueiiess results." 

 As you look at these trees from a distance, you can- 

 not resist tlie impression (however quiet the sea and 

 the air) tliat a furious gale is at that moment strain- 

 ing every branch to leeward, as a March day does 

 the garments of pedestrians, or the flags of the ship- 

 ping in a harbor. The seashore parks of Victoria 

 or Vancouver, and of San Francisco, give other ex- 

 amples of this same appearance. A conspicuous in- 

 stance of this same thing is to be seen in tlie Salinas 

 valley, which extends for over a hundred miles south- 

 ward from Monterey. There a high point of view 

 shows that every tree and bush (save large clusters) 

 in the whole valley leans toward the south-east (ap- 

 proximately), urged by the terrific wind that never 

 ceases to rush up the long valley from the sea to the 

 hills. 



It is needless, however, to seek examples so far 

 away. A line of evergreens along the Greenwich 

 River, in eastern Connecticut, shows the asymmetry 

 produced by wind very plainly; and the shore-trees all 

 along Mnntauk Point, and the low islands on that 

 coast, are bent away from the sea. On any ocean 

 coast (or equally along the Great Lakes), on wide 

 plains, or in any lofty mountain-range, according to 

 my pretty wide observation in the United States, one 

 might tell the course of the prevailing winds as ac- 

 curately as fifty years of signal-service observation, 

 hy a glance at e.xposed trees, which, nurtured in 

 steady gales, bend in age as their sapling twigs were 

 inclined. 



Snow is another factor to he considered in regarding 

 the growth of trees in mountain regions. The flat- 

 tened thickets of spruce just above timber-line, of the 

 same species which, in sheltered spots no lower down, 

 assumes an erect and lofty attitude, are matted close 

 to the ground by long weight of snow, as well as 

 bowed beneath fierce gales. Many and varied exam- 

 ples of its effect might be adduceil ; but I will refer to 

 one only. On the road to the anthracite mine above 

 Crested Butte, in the Elk Mountains of Colorado, you 

 pass through a large grove of aspens, some eighteen 

 inches or more in diameter, standing tliickly on the 

 liillside, at an elevation of about nine thousand feet. 

 That region is famous for its deep snows, which 

 might be inferred from the fact that every tree in this 

 broad aspeii-grove is bent far out of the vertical, 

 many of them thirty or forty degrees, and all uni- 

 formly as to direction. The only explanation of this 

 is the snow, which weights them down through so 

 many months of the year. The sturdier trunlvs rise 

 vertically in many cases, hut their tops arch over 

 almost in a semicircle; wliile the saplings are bowed 

 nearly to the ground. In many parts of the moun- 

 tains, great swaths lie open in the woods, and can 

 never (or at least do not) become forested on account 

 of snow-slides; while the opposition of wind and snow 

 together are the only conceivable reasons why many 

 hare plateaus are not tree-grown; that, for example, 

 between the Lake Fork of the Gunnison and Coche- 

 topa Creek. 



Ernest Ixobusoll. 



New Haven, Oct. 10, 1883. 



Standard railroad time. 



Though the subject of standard and uniform rail- 

 way time lias for some years been iindrr Cdiisiilcralioii 

 hy various scientific and practical liodics, it docs not 

 appear in any way to have been exhausted, even in its 

 main features, jiesides, a certain bias has shown it- 

 self in favor of the adoption of a series of certain 

 hourly meridians, and thus keeping Greenwich min- 

 utes and seconds, when contrasted with the practica- 

 bility of a more simple proposition. There is also a 

 feature in the discussion of the subject which bears 

 to have more light thrown upon it; namely, wh.at 

 necessary connection there is between the railway 

 companies' uniform time and the me.an local time of 

 the people, or the time necessarily used in all transac- 

 tions of common life. Directly or by implication, 

 certain time-reformers evidently aim at a standanl 

 time, which shall be alike binding on railway traffic 

 as well as on the business community; and to this 

 great error much of the complexity of the subject is 

 to be attributed, and it has directly retarded the 

 much-needed reform in the time-management of our 

 roads. 



We say all ordinary business everywhere must for- 

 ever be conducted on local mean solar time, the slight 

 difference between apparent and mean time having 

 produced no inconvenience; and we may rightly ask 

 tlie railway companies to give in their time-tables for 

 public use everywhere and always, the mean local 

 time of the departure and of the arrival of trains. It 

 is the departure from this almost self-evident state- 

 ment, and the substitution and mixing-up in the time- 

 tables of times referi-ed to various local standards, 

 which has in no small measure contributed to tlie 

 confusion and perplexity of the present system. The 

 people at large do not care to know by what time- 

 syslem any railroad manages its trains, any more than 

 they care what the steam-pressure is, or what is the 

 number of the locomotive All the traveller is in- 

 terested in is regularity and safety of travel: hence it 

 was to be desired, that, whatever the standai'd or 

 standards of time adopted, the companies would re- 

 frain from troubling him with a matter which only con- 

 cerns their internal organization, or which is entirely 

 administrative. We look upon the publication of the 

 railway time-tables, hy local time everywhere, as a 

 sine quCi non for the satisfactory settlement of the time 

 question, so far as tlie public at large is concerned ; and 

 it would seem equally plain that the liest system for 

 the administration of railroads would be tlie adoption 

 of a uniform time, this time to be known only to the 

 managers and employees of the roads. 



We are informed in Science of Oct. 12, that the 

 solution of the problem of standard railway time is 

 near at liand, and probably has already been consum- 

 mated by the adoption of four or more regions, each 

 having uniform minutes and seconds of Greenwich 

 time, but the local hour of the middle meridian. To 

 have come down from several dozen of distinct time- 

 systems to a very few and uniform ones, except as to 

 the hour, is certainly a step forward, and, so far, 

 gratifying; but why not adopt Greenwich time, pure 

 and simple, and have absolute uniformity? Probably 

 this will be felt before long. The counting of twenty- 

 four hours to the day, in the place of twice twelve, 

 and the obliteration from time-tables of the obnox- 

 ious A.M. and P.M. numbers, would seem to be 

 generally acknowledged as an improvement and sim- 

 plification, and perhaps can best be dealt with by 

 adopting it at once, accompanied by a simple explana- 

 torv statement. . C. A. Scuott. 



VViwliington, Oct. 18, 1883. 



