534 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Dr. John C. Phillips, of Boston, of a 

 large sum of money for the purchase of 

 a redwood grove as a memorial to his 

 brother-in-law, the late Colonel Boiling, 

 who fell under circumstances of great 

 heroism in the late war. No more beau- 

 tiful or effective memorial can be imag- 

 ined than a grove of these trees, the very 

 name of which, semperwrens, is redolent 

 of the idea of immortality. 



If those who desire to preserve in a 

 permanent form the memory of their 

 dead would join in a movement to set 

 aside memorial groves, the whole prob- 

 lem of the preservation of the redwoods 

 on a very large scale would be solved. 

 If a tithe of the gold now squandered in 

 ugly and costly monuments, which dese- 

 crate the cemeteries throughout the land, 

 were spent on trees, the world would be 

 fuller of beauty and possibly more grate- 

 ful to those who supplied the money. 



In addition to donations of money and 

 trees for such memorial purposes, the 

 league expects to find sympathetic and 

 cordial support for the park among the 

 lumbermen. They know only too well 

 the value of the timber. The timber is 

 their property, and their business is to 

 cut and to realize on it. 



It is not fair for a community to ask 

 them to hold this timber, to pay taxes on 

 it, and then to sacrifice their financial in- 

 terests for the public welfare. It is the 

 duty of the county, the State, and the 

 nation to purchase their holdings at the 

 proper value. 



The question involved is not local; it 

 is a State, a national — in fact, an inter- 

 national — concern, as the benefit derived 

 from the preservation of the redwoods 

 will be for the people of the nation and 

 the world at large. There is no reason 

 why the lumbermen should abandon 

 their interests without adequate remuner- 

 ation, although in many cases individuals 

 and companies will donate a certain por- 

 tion of their timber or sell at low figures. 



If the State, before building the high- 

 ways which made the timber accessible, 

 had approached the lumbermen and made 

 it a condition precedent that a strip of 

 timber on each side of the road should 

 be donated, no doubt in many cases the 

 lumbermen would have found it greatly 

 to their interest to accept the proposal. 

 The fact that this was not done was the 

 fault of the State, its hiehwav commis- 



sion, and its legislature, and not the fault 

 of the lumbermen. 



Experience has shown that the only 

 effective, persistent, and intelligent con- 

 servators of wild game have been sports- 

 men who have evolved from game-killers 

 into game protectors, and personally the 

 writer believes that the lumber owners 

 themselves, who are among the finest 

 men on the coast, will be found to be 

 most generous and helpful in any scheme 

 looking to the preservation of the timber. 



It will cost money to preserve the red- 

 woods — many millions of dollars ; but 

 California has no choice. Either the 

 amount needed to save the groves must 

 be supplied today or else a far greater 

 sum will be required ten years hence to 

 purchase a butchered and isolated tenth 

 part of the forests. 



REDWOODS NEVER CAN BE REPLACED 



If the groves are bought in their pres- 

 ent condition and at relatively small cost, 

 it will be a great innovation, because 

 heretofore Americans have followed the 

 wasteful policy of recklessly exploiting 

 wild life, forests, and streams, and then, 

 as soon as the destruction is complete, the 

 policy is changed, game is reintroduced, 

 and attempts are made to reforest the 

 mountains at vast cost. But redwoods 

 never can be replaced. 



Of course, lumbering must go on ; but 

 most of the purposes for which redwood 

 is now being used can be served from 

 second-growth timber, and there are vast 

 areas of denuded, devastated, and lum- 

 bered-over lands which can be made in 

 a few years to supply all the timber 

 needed. 



It probably would not be desirable, 

 even if possible, to preserve all the red- 

 wood timber now standing, although as 

 standing timber it is perhaps worth to the 

 State many times its value as lumber. 

 This is true, even from an investment 

 point of view, because the value of the 

 timber is increasing by leaps and bounds. 



All this is entirely aside from the sen- 

 timental considerations against destroy- 

 ing trees of such great age, size, and 

 beauty. Xo one who has seen these 

 groves can fail to love them. Nature has 

 been so bountiful to California that the 

 Californians are trustees, for the rest of 

 the world, of many of these priceless 

 heirlooms from a distant past. 



