142 West American Scientist. 



as are requisite to the profession of mining- engineer at the Ecole 

 des mines. In 1854 he returned to this country, and, accom- 

 panied by the late Prof. Rivot. he devoted several months to the 

 examination of the mineral region of Lake Superior. In 1859 he 

 was engaged in the exploration of a part of the island of New 

 Foundland, and in i860 he went to California as one of the chief 

 assistants in the state geological survey of which Prof. J. D. 

 Whitney was the director. In 1864 he was appointed one of the 

 commissioners of the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree 

 Grove, a position he held until 1880. From 1862 until 1883 Prof. 

 Ashburner was actively engaged in his professional work, and 

 travelled almost incessantly in the mining districts of the United 

 States, British Columbia and Mexico, also in the more distant 

 regions of South America and Asia. 



In 1874 he was made professor of mining in the University of 

 California. In 1880 he was appointed regent af the same Univer- 

 sity, and was a member of the board of regents at the time of his 

 death. He was selected by the late James Lick as one of the 

 trustees of the California school of mechanical arts, and was other- 

 wise prominent in various scientific and educational societies, and 

 his death will be regarded as a public loss. — R> E. C. S. in Science. 



THE WE YMO UTH PINE. 



*' About the sources of the Alleghany River,' ' says Dr. Edwin 

 James in that rare old work, Long's expedition to the Rocky 

 Mountains, '*are extensive forests of pine On French creek and 

 other tributary streams are large bodies of lands closely covered 

 with forests, where the great Weymouth pine and the hemlock 

 spruce are intermixed with beech, birch, and the sugar maple. 

 The great white or weymouth pine, is one of the most beautiful of 

 the North American species. Its trunk often attains the diameter 

 of five or six feet, rising smooth and straight from sixty to eighty 

 feet, and terminated by a dense conical top. This tree, though 

 not exclusively confined to the northern parts of our continent, 

 attains there its greatest magnitude and perfection. It forms a 

 striking- feature in the forest scenery of Vermont, New Hampshire 

 and some parts of Canada and New Ycrk, rising by nearly half its 

 elevation above the summits of the other trees, and resembling, 

 like the palms of the tropics, so beautifully described by M. De 

 Saint Pierre in his Paul and V^irgin.a, and also by Baron Hum- 

 boldt in his personal narrative, a forest planted upon another 

 forest. 



The sighing of the wind in the tops of these trees, resembles the 

 iicarce audible murmurings of a distant waterfall, and adds greatly 

 to the impression of solennity produced by the gloom and silence 

 of the pine forest. In the southern parts of the Alleghany Moun- 



