132 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



beauty. If there is any country finer than California I do not 

 know it. All the tones of nature are within its border. This 

 country has glorious mountain ranges and valleys, splendid for- 

 ests, great snow-peaks, the wonderful sequoias — and for all these 

 things none of you deserve the slightest credit. (Applause and 

 laughter.) The progress of true civilization is best shown by 

 the increasing thought which each generation takes for the good 

 of those who are to come after. You can ruin its forests, you 

 can dry up its streams, you can hack and scar its surface until 

 its marvelous beauty is gone. The preservation of the forest 

 resources of this State, especially, is of vital importance to the 

 commonwealth. I go farther. No State can be judged to be 

 really civiHzed which in the treatment of its natural resources 

 does not take account of, or aim to, preserve the beauty of the 

 land in which its people live. An aesthetic as well as economic 

 factor is involved in the problem of conservation. Poor, indeed, 

 is the conservation which does not also conserve beauty. 



"There is another matter of which I would like to speak in 

 relation to the sequoias. Don't mutilate them. Don't let others 

 mutilate them. Don't use them for advertising. I was amazed 

 to see the trunks of the big trees at Santa Cruz covered with 

 visiting and business cards. It seems inconceivably vulgar for 

 a man to attach his worthless name by means of paste-board to 

 these giants of the forest! In Egypt I actually once observed 

 how a man had gone about with a pot of paint putting his name 

 on the temples and pyramids. I wish I had been guardian of 

 Egypt; I should have put him through a course in aesthetics by 

 forced marches. I hope that this commonwealth will continue in 

 the course it has taken and remain a watchful guardian of its 

 natural resources and the beauty of its scenery." 



Old Tioga Road to be Acquired. 



The following news item appeared in the daily press last April : 

 "The Government brought suit in the United States Circuit 

 Court yesterday to condemn an unused toll road in order to 

 make it part of the new system of roads through the Yosemite 

 National Park. The road begins at Crockers station, Tuolumne 

 County, and extends through a corner of Mariposa County into 

 Bennettsville, Mono County. It was built in 1883 by the Great 

 Sierra Consolidated Silver Mining Company, and is fifty-six 

 miles long. When the mines ceased to operate in 1892 the road 

 was allowed to fall into disuse. W. C. N. Swift, as successor 

 to the company's claims, is named as defendant." 



