Californian Forestry

Abstract

IT is matter for great satisfaction to learn that the “people of the State of California represented in Senate and Assembly” have created a Board of Forestry for the purpose of collecting and diffusing information with regard to forestry, tree-culture, and tree-preservation. The readers of NATURE will not fail to appreciate the economic significance of wisely administered forest laws so far as those laws are based upon scientific knowledge, and there are special reasons why they should feel an interest in the forests of the Pacific slope. They will consequently be glad to learn from the second biennial Report of the State Board of Forestry now before us that whereas, “under the old conditions, waste, destruction, and violation of law were rife, … the activity of the Board in attempting a reform, and the consequent investigations of the Government, have had a most gratifying result.” Fires have been reduced in frequency and extent, watersheds and springs have been protected, slopes saved from further denudation, and replanting effected. It seems strange that, with so great a wealth of native trees, replanting should have become necessary, and still more that the Eucalypts of Australia should be preferred for this purpose to the pines of the Sierras. Nevertheless there are many sites where drought-resisting trees are specially required, and in which some of the Eucalypts, such as viminalis and corynocalyx, do better than the pines. Experimental stations have been established under different conditions of soil and climate, survey-maps have been constructed, while in the Report now before us a beginning has been made of a scientific and popular description of the forest trees of California. The preparation of this catalogue has been intrusted to Mr. J. G. Lemmon; its illustration will be undertaken by Mrs. Lemmon, and by photographs. For botanical purposes the writings of Engelmann, Sargent, Watson, Parry, and others in recent times, of Sir W. Hooker and Dr. Arnott at a more remote period, will supply what is needed.