

POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



857 



into midsummer, while at still greater alti- 

 tudes, in sheltered places, it remains through- 

 out the year. By its topographical structure 

 the park is designed by nature as a reservoir 

 for receiving, storing, and distributing an 

 exceptional water-supply, unexcelled by any 

 area near the head- waters of the great rivers. 

 The continental divide, separating the waters 

 of the Atlantic from those of the Pacific, 

 crosses the plateau from southeast to north- 

 west. On both sides of this divide lie sev- 

 eral bodies of water, which form so marked 

 a feature in the scenery of the plateau that 

 the region has been designated the lake coun- 

 try of the park. Yellowstone Lake presents 

 a superficial area of 139 square miles, and a 

 shore-line of nearly 100 miles. The dis- 

 charge at the outlet was found in Septem- 

 ber, 1886, to be 1,525 cubic feet per second, 

 or about 35,000,000 imperial gallons per 

 hour. Dr. William Hallock estimates, from 

 measurements, that the amount of water 

 running into the park and leaving it by the 

 five main drainage channels would be equiv- 

 alent to a stream five feet deep, one hundred 

 and ninety feet wide, with a current of three 

 miles per hour, and that over an area of four 

 thousand square miles the minimum dis- 

 charge was equal to one cubic foot per sec- 

 ond per square mile. For the preservation 

 and regulation of this water-supply, the for- 

 est, which covers the mountains, valleys, and 

 table-lands, and everywhere borders upon 

 the lake-shores, is of inestimable value. Of 

 the present park area about eighty-four per 

 cent is forest-clad, mostly with coniferous 

 trees. 



The Glacier of Mount Taeoma. — Relat- 

 ing, in the " School of Mines Quarterly," an 

 excursion to the great glacier of Mount Ta- 

 eoma, Mr. Baily Willis describes the glacier, 

 when the party came upon it from the bed 

 of Carbon River, as rising, like a wall of ice, 

 from thirty to fifty feet, across the path, 

 while the river tumbled in little cascades 

 from a low cave in the center. The upper 

 surface of the wall, all its sharp ends having 

 been melted off, was covered with a layer of 

 rock and earth. " I think," says the author, 

 " there can be no better illustration of the 

 advance of a glacier to the point where the 

 melting at its face balances the downward 

 progress, than this worn, shrunken extrem- 



ity, pressed on as it is by a vast accumula- 

 tion of ice in the basin between Taeoma and 

 Crescent Mountain. It pushes no great ter- 

 minal moraine before it. It meets with no 

 obstruction save the narrowness of the canon; 

 but here in the shadow of the cliffs the air- 

 currents from the west bid it halt." The 

 Crescent Mountain glacial system is fed by 

 slopes which descend ten thousand feet in 

 five miles from the Liberty Cap, Tacoma's 

 northern summit. " Much too steep for 

 snow to lie on, except on the highest shoul- 

 ders where it packs to a depth of several 

 hundred feet, the upper third of this tre- 

 mendous height is bare black rock, on which 

 the avalanches shatter into clouds of eddy- 

 ing smoke. The lower four miles are cov- 

 ered with a sheet of flashing ice, which push- 

 es downward over the uneven surface, here 

 carrying huge gleaming pinnacles aloft, there 

 flowing in graceful curves like a river's cur- 

 rent. Its western portion comes onward to 

 the cliffs of Crescent Mountain, nearly three 

 thousand feet high, and turning from them 

 sweeps down into the gorge of Carbon River ; 

 the eastern part extends a long tongue into 

 a meadow brilliant with flowers, whence 

 White River plunges into its unexplored 

 canon. This meadow is but one end of a 

 green valley that nestles strangely in this 

 region of perpetual frost and sterile rocks, 

 bounded on three sides by ice and snow, and 

 on the fourth by forbidding precipices." 



Origin of New Forest Growths. — Obser- 

 vations on the " new growth " of trees that 

 appears after forest fires have been de- 

 scribed by Prof. W. J. Beal, of the Michigan 

 Forestry Commission. The stubs of most 

 deciduous trees sprout after a fire, and are 

 capable of preserving their vitality for a very 

 long time. Slender oaks, resembling young 

 sprouts, may be found in the forests attached 

 to clumped roots of " grubs " of various 

 sizes, that will show that the present growth 

 is the first, second, third, or fourth sprout 

 that has apparently come in succession from 

 the same foundation. Of three little oaks 

 which were found still having the remains of 

 the seedling acorns attached by the stems of 

 the cotyledons, one was five years old. Oth- 

 ers, some four inches high and less than an 

 eighth of an inch in diameter, were shown 

 by the remains of the bud-rings to be from 



