POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



861 



stand the language of birds. The other was 

 Francis of Assisi, who was in some measure 

 the forerunner of Gilbert White. There was 

 a legend that he so loved the birds that they 

 flocked around him while he preached ser- 

 mons to them. The legend at least showed 

 his love for those creatures and his power 

 of making them love him. These character- 

 istics of Gilbert White could be gathered 

 from his book ; but the picture was filled up 

 by the mass of family correspondence which 

 had just come to light. The combination of 

 simplicity and refinement, the absence of os- 

 tentation and self-consciousness which con- 

 stituted the great charm of White's book 

 were equally conspicuous in his family corre- 

 spondence and in his every-day habits. The 

 Earl of Stamford, who has been collecting 

 reminiscences and unexplored documents con- 

 nected with his great relative, White, said 

 that years ago an old woman was asked 

 what she remembered of him. She said that 

 he used to walk about the lanes tap-tapping 

 with his cane, and stopping every now and 

 then to brush the dust off his shoes. 



Unexplored Mountain Regions. — While 

 many of the mountain districts of the world, 

 hitherto unexplored, have been reached in re- 

 cent years by scientific mountaineers, yet, 

 excepting Switzerland and the Pyrenees, 

 which have been entirely explored by the 

 different Alpine Clubs, there is no chain of 

 mountains, as Mr. Edwin Swift Balch shows 

 in his essay on Mountain Exploration, which 

 is as yet thoroughly known or perfectly 

 mapped out. New Zealand, though settled 

 and inhabited by Englishmen for many 

 years, had to wait till a few years ago for 

 Mr. Green first to explore its Alps. The 

 Himalayas, although the Indian Govern- 

 ment has tried to map and explore them, are 

 still in many cases keeping their secrets un- 

 til men shall come along who know the sci- 

 ence of climbing. Mr. Graham's trip in the 

 Sikkim ranges in 1886 showed conclusively 

 how little was known about the Himalayas, 

 as he has now left us in doubt as to 

 whether the two peaks which he saw from 

 the top of Kabru were not higher than Gau- 

 risankar. In America there is a large field 

 left for mountain exploration. Of the Sel- 

 kirks we know but little; St. Elias has not 

 been reached ; the Alaskan ranges and Mount 



Fairweather and Mount Cook are believed to 

 be entirely untouched. The Mount Wrangel 

 range is hardly known, even by name, and 

 though it is said to have been measured and 

 to be over twenty thousand feet high, we know 

 practically nothing about it or its surround- 

 ings. On the map of the northern Rockies, 

 north of the Selkirks, we find a bunch of 

 peaks, called Mount Brown and Mount Mur- 

 chison, and marked as being over sixteen 

 thousand feet high. Of these mountains we 

 again are in almost complete ignorance, 

 though from Mr. Green's explorations we 

 may doubt the accuracy of their supposed 

 altitude. In South America the Andes of 

 Pera and Chili are mostly still unascended, 

 and even Ecuador has had only one serious 

 exploration, by Mr. Whymper. Here is un- 

 explored mountain country enough to occupy 

 Our clubs several years. 



Vegetation of American Deserts. — The 



true sagebrush of the Western desert (Arte- 

 misia tridentata), according to Prof. C. Hart 

 Merriam, begins with a solid front along the 

 southern border of the upper Sonoran zone 

 and spreads northward over the Great Basin 

 like a monstrous sheet, covering almost with- 

 out a break hundreds of thousands of square 

 miles. It is not only the most striking and 

 widely diffused plant of the upper Sonora and 

 transition zones, but as a social plant has 

 few equals, often occupying immense areas 

 to the exclusion of all but the humblest and 

 least conspicuous forms. Wherever one 

 travels in this vast region, the aromatic odor 

 of the sagebrush is always present, and some- 

 times, particularly after rains, is so powerful 

 as to cause pain in the nostrils. In addition 

 to the sage, many of the desert ranges sup- 

 port a growth of shrubs and small trees rare- 

 ly if ever found in the intervening deserts 

 and plains, whatever the altitude. The so- 

 called cedar (Juniperus calif omica utahensis) 

 and the pifion or nut pine (Pinus monophylla) 

 clothe the summits and higher slopes of 

 many of the ranges, forming stunted open 

 forests of much beauty. Mixed with these 

 are scattered clumps of bushes representing 

 a number of genera, most of which bear 

 green foliage and handsome flowers. Some 

 of the desert ranges, as the Funeral Moun- 

 tains, are too excessively hot and arid to 

 support even these forms of vegetation ; 



