102 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 473 



be made establishing any forest reserve, and by such 

 modification may reduce the area or change the boundary 

 lines of such reserve, or may vacate altogether any order 

 creating such reserve." This amendment would probably 

 have proved harmless, for the President has already this 

 right, although this fact has been disputed. 



The bill with this amendment did not receive the Presi- 

 dent's signature, so that the status of the reservations is 

 exactly the same as it was before the passage of the Senate 

 amendment on the 28th of February. 



It is a proposition which admits of no argument, that 

 the forest reservations cannot be used exclusively for any 

 particular class of the community ; they belong as much 

 to the east and to the south as they do to the west. They 

 are part of the public domain, and it is for the interest of 

 the whole country that they should belong to the nation. 

 But these reservations must be managed so that they shall 

 continue to preserve the flow of rivers protected by their 

 forests ; their trees must be cut to supply lumber, fuel and 

 fencing material ; mineral deposits must be sought for and 

 mined within their boundaries ; and all land really valuable 

 for agriculture must be taken from them and opened to 

 settlement. Unless the reservations can be made to play 

 their part in the best permanent development of the country, 

 there is no justification for their existence, and sooner or 

 later they must be abandoned. But there is now no organ- 

 ization under the Government which can be trusted to 

 make rules for the wise management and development of 

 the reservations, or which can carry out such rules after 

 they are made, and until Congress authorizes the estab- 

 lishment of a national forest service and the Secretary 

 of the Interior can organize it, the reservations should be 

 strictly guarded against invasion of every kind, unless the 

 country is prepared to witness the destruction of one of its 

 most valuable possessions. 



There is great danger, however, that another attack will 

 be made on them in the extraordinary session of Con- 

 gress which met on Monday, but the protests which have 

 been raised in the press all over the country against the 

 action of the Senate show that a new attack, made on 

 them by men who seem to believe that the national domain 

 is their private property, to be used in any way that will 

 fill their pockets fastest, will meet with serious opposition. 



We cannot deny the gravity of the situation. Many men 

 honestly believe that these great reservations are unneces- 

 sary ; they will certainly be opposed by every man in 

 the states where they are located who wants to cut tim- 

 ber on the public domain without paying for it, or 

 desires to secure a title to Government timber-land. Every 

 miner who wants to burn over the country to facili- 

 tate his prospecting, or wants to timber his mine at the 

 cost of the nation, and every sheep man who wants to 

 pasture his herds on the public domain, to which all sheep 

 men now seem to believe they have acquired a vested 

 right, will oppose forest protection in every way in their 

 power. These men are noisy, active and well organized ; 

 they have great influence in Congress, where their claims 

 will be loudly and persistently pressed, and only the 

 expression of the calm judgment of the country can save 

 the situation. 



Ceanothus in the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada. 



THE greatest charm of the landscape in the lowest 

 foothills of the Sierra Nevada is the "Mountain 

 Heliotrope," the Ceanothus tomentosus, Parry, in flower on 

 May-day. It is interspersed with the all-covering Adenos- 

 toma fasciculatum, or Chemisal, and seems to gain addi- 

 tional charm through association with Baccharis consan- 

 guinea with its bright green and varnished foliage. It is 

 but seldom that we find a shrub of this Mountain Helio- 

 trope which has developed naturally. Like the trees in 

 the forest, it is crowded, and the sparingly foliated limbs 

 have to reach light as best they may and secure room for 

 its sun-loving bloom. In all my rambles I have never 



found a shrub showing other than rich blue flowers, al- 

 though there is a variety with flowers of a clear and pure 

 white. 



The term "Chaparral" is often applied to the shrubbery 

 on our hillsides, no matter whether such is composed of 

 Manzanita or any other growth, but by the people who 

 live here it is applied to only one Ceanothus, and that is 

 C. cuneatus, the pest of uncultivated land. It ranges from 

 750 feet elevation up to 2,500 feet, but will occasionally 

 creep into higher zones, provided warm currents favor its 

 growth. It is, therefore, a companion of Pinus Sabiniana, 

 the Nut Pine. A common but erroneous belief is that it 

 grows on good land only. Such is not the case. It will 

 grow on rocky as well as deep soil, provided only that it 

 gets plenty of sunshine. It will clothe hillsides for miles 

 and give them the grayish Nile-green tint which they 

 always present to the distant beholder. At the time of 

 flowering, in the last week of March, this color changes and 

 the whole seems cream-white from the millions of minute 

 flowers which they produce on the extremity of every limb. 

 The inside of these much-branching low-limbed shrubs 

 appears dead and has been well compared to a bundle of 

 strands of barbed wire. Seedlings grow up by the million, 

 and all appear equal and well fit to struggle for existence 

 with their neighbors. Wherever man has done any culti- 

 vating, cleared an old woodroad, cut a trail, plowed a 

 furrow in years past or still keeps cultivating it, the Chapar- 

 ral follows him, like the Nettle or Chickweed. 



At the mean height of this Mountain Heliotrope belt, 

 about 1,500 feet, we find a new species, a charming shrub, 

 Ceanothus Californicus, Kell (C. integerrimus, H. & A.) 

 More tender in appearance as well as in texture, it also 

 chooses a more lovely companion in its zone, the bright 

 green Libocedrus. People call it Deerbrush, as it offers 

 good browse for the deer when such are driven down by 

 heavy snowfalls in higher altitudes. As pasture is poor all 

 through the Sierras, cattle partly live on Deerbrush, and it 

 withstands well such abuse. While ten feet is the average 

 height for this shrub, I have seen trunks of old, well -pro- 

 tected specimens with a diameter of eight inches. The 

 foliage is very dark green, even when tender and new, 

 and the limbs add greatly to the color, as they remain green 

 for years, and then only turn silvery gray. Their large 

 trusses of slightly cream-colored flowers caused the name 

 of Lilac to be given to them, and we find these plants 

 even in the gardens about the mountain homes in spite of the 

 tendency to seek foreign shrubs and flowers. The bloom- 

 ing period of this so-called Lilac is very long ; in fact, it has 

 two distinct periods. The beginning of May sees the first 

 bloom open, and as late as October and even November 

 their flowers may be gathered. These are developed on 

 shoots which lengthen the summer growth, and often on 

 branches bearing many seeds ripe enough to drop out. 

 This plant prefers northern slopes of creeks and gullies, and 

 blooms best wherever the sun gives it most light. The 

 texture of the leaves is thick, and they are evergreen like the 

 other species mentioned. If growing in thickets, as it does 

 very often, it has straggly limbs, like any other Ceanothus, 

 yet under free development it is a very effective shrub and 

 lends character to miles of riverside slopes. 



The earliness of its bloom and the lowness of its occur- 

 rence bring this species in contact with the blue bloom of 

 the Mountain Heliotrope, and I remember, with renewed 

 pleasure, the surprise and delight I had when coming 

 across a very beautiful hybrid between these two species. 

 I found it near Clinton, on the rough banks of a mined-out 

 region, almost deserted, though once populated by thou- 

 sands of miners. This hybrid proved in every detail that 

 the mixing of blood is almost always productive of a 

 development of the characters of both parents. The 

 trusses were far larger, taking this characteristic from C. 

 Californicus, while they were more conical, a trait derived 

 from C. tomentosus. Their color was a tender lavender, 

 clear and pleasing. The shrub was more robust than C. 

 tomentosus, and yet not so thickly branched as C. Califor- 



