40 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



question of a few years, however, when the higher mead- 

 ows will begin to show the results of the encroaching 

 pines as clearly as do the lower ones to-day. 



There is perhaps no one feature of our Sierra more at- 

 tractive to the lover of the woods than these Uttle spots 

 of verdure and choice flowers scattered among the desola- 

 tion of bare rocks and the dark stretches of the heavy 

 timber. They are lovely to look upon. They assure water 

 and good feed for the horses. They make for the com- 

 fort and ease of mountaineering in the Sierra. Their 

 deterioration must eventually injure the camper; their 

 loss would be irreparable. It was to preserve the grass 

 of the meadows as well as the trees of the forest that we 

 excluded sheep and have partially excluded cattle. But it 

 is the meadows themselves and not a season's crop of grass 

 that are now at stake. There is no doubt that an excellent 

 open condition of the upland meadows when the Park was 

 first set aside was attributable to the sheep and their herd- 

 ers. The sheep browsed close, and year after year nipped 

 off the seedling pines. What escaped the sheep was killed 

 in the yearly brush and grass fires started by the herders. 

 In this way the natural aging of the meadows and their 

 replacement by trees was checked, and they were kept 

 open, soft, and verdant. 



From the greater portion of the Park the sheep have 

 been excluded efficiently now for from ten to twenty 

 years. For a like period extensive fires have been pre- 

 vented. Some of the natural results of stopping these two 

 agencies are now becoming clearly apparent. Left to 

 itself, the meadow, — which was once a lake bed, a wet 

 glacial pocket, or a spring dammed back by a stick of 

 down timber till peat and silt had filled it — gradually 

 grows drier. Eventually it becomes dry enough for the 

 seedling tamarack to take root. In a few years from that 

 time the meadow is no more. A thicket of spindling pines 

 takes its place, killing the grass and converting the moist 

 spongy soil into a dry flat. The water which before was 

 held in the soil is now carried up into the trees, exposed 



