Jam auy 20, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



95 



laia, the Texan barberry; here is Pinus 

 edulis. Engelmann's nut pine, and most 

 characteristic and perfect of all, here 

 stands Jniiipcrus padiypldoeum, the moun- 

 tain juniper, great forests of it, ancient 

 trees betimes, all comparatively low, but 

 with giant trunks six or eight feet in diam- 

 eter ; these time-defying cedars are the trees 

 of the red beds. With the junipers, espe- 

 cially as we pass their upper limits and 

 come out upon the calcareous cretaceous 

 swells and plains, occurs another oak or 

 two. The soils are now remarkably rich in 

 lime. The waters that fall on the higher 

 mountain levels escape above the red-bed 

 shales, but so impregnated with lime that 

 they actually form a new stony deposit often 

 for a distance of many rods, about the point 

 of exit. On these calcareous soils stands 

 now the forest, along the very summit of 

 the mountain, nine thousand feet above sea 

 level, a magnificent forest of spruce and 

 pine and fir: Pseiidotsiiga douglasii, the 

 Douglas spruce, five or six feet in thick- 

 ness; Abies concolor ; Finns pondcrosa in 

 beautiful perfection of its immortal youth ; 

 Pinus f.exilis at its very best ; a typical 

 Oregon forest six or eight miles wide and 

 some twenty long, crowning the summit of 

 this isolated mountain peak in the midst 

 of the deserts of southern New Mexico, for, 

 as everybody knows, these are in general 

 species of the forest of the far Pacific coast. 

 As one stands now at last thus at the very 

 summit of his problem, and from some 

 promontory rock of vantage looks out upon 

 the vast plain thus mountain-girt, the in- 

 describable beauty of the scene must first 

 impress him. Far to the west lie the San 

 Andreas, the Organ and the Oscuro ranges, 

 a long low wall, gray and solid, its serrate 

 summits indentured in the aziare sky ; be- 

 low, the plain, brilliantly lighted, soft and 

 brown and lucid, save as the mal pais 

 stretches its blackness as a bar sinister 

 across the northern end, while away to the 



south the gypsum desert seems a cloud of 

 snow beneath our feet, more brilliant than 

 that evanescent whiteness that floats in the 

 deep blue far above — the one the strange 

 counterpart of the other; all is so silent, 

 so changeless and so fair! 



But just now we heed not the beauty of 

 the landscape; other thoughts come crowd- 

 ing upon the observer, all equally insistent 

 and impressive. Evidence of enormous 

 physical change thrusts itself upon our as- 

 tonished attention; not the sunken desert 

 itself alone, that great block already de- 

 scribed, but the denuded and sundered 

 mountain walls, the great canons that 

 stretch back for miles, cut down through 

 even the solid limestones at the mountain 

 base— a process vast and old. Once the 

 cretaceous sea rolled here, and when it re- 

 treated here were beds of limestones hun- 

 dreds of feet thick. Where are they now ? 

 Only here and there a remnant on the 

 mountain summit; the desert is covered 

 with their debris almost to distant sea. 



No less is one impressed by the slowness 

 of all this topographic change. There is 

 evidence of violence, suddenness, nowhere, 

 save in the mal pais, which is local, recent, 

 and does not affect the general problem. 

 The moving currents of the air, the soft 

 ministrations of the summer shower, the 

 melting winter snows, have carved these 

 mountains, ai"e sculpturing the,m to-day. 

 Those columnar whirlwinds that even now 

 like dancing dervishes chase each other 

 across the plain, are shaping: anew the 

 desert ; that thin cloud that hangs yonder 

 like a banner from the mountain top is a 

 rainstorm, changing even now the general 

 altitude of the range. 



But once again ; as we look out thus from 

 the summit of our problem we are im- 

 pressed with still another fact more far- 

 reaching, more splendid still. The whole 

 living covering of the world, the vegetative 

 garment of the desert and the mountain, 



