one of the primary activities of the club, and after the necessary experience acquired during the first, second, and third seasons they have been of increasing success. The leaders of the club in these outings have taken less-experienced members up every notable mountain peak from Mount Rainier in the north to Mount Whitney in the south; more particularly the region from the Lyell group east of Yosemite and south to Mount Whitney has been “explored, enjoyed, and rendered accessible," to quote from the articles of incorporation, and "authentic information published" in a way to compel the respect and cooperation of the state and federal authorities.

Each of the outings had its faithful historian. The first one, into Tuolumne Meadows in 1901, was described by Edward Taylor Parsons. In these meadows fourteen years later the memorial lodge to him was dedicated by his grateful and appreciative fellow-members. These descriptions of the outings, together with the other articles by individuals, have furnished such a large amount of interesting matter and picture the life of the club in the High Sierra so well that no less a person than the distinguished mountain-climber Sir Martin Conway writes the club under date of April, 1912:

The Sierra Club seems to me to preserve much of the old spirit which was in Alpine climbers in the days when climbing was a fresh thing. I like to think of your camping parties in the great forest valleys and along their vast far-seeing slopes. I like to think of the great trout found in the streams you have stocked. I like to think of all the good you are doing and trying to do in forest conservation.

The above is from a man whose record in the Bolivian Andes was Mount Aconcagua (23,090 feet).

Edward Whymper enjoyed these publications and expressed this appreciation in the substantial bequest to the club of £50.

The late William Russell Dudley, from the beginning of our publications until his death, in 1911, kept us constantly informed in his carefully edited Forestry Notes. For over sixteen years he patiently recorded and published in Forestry Notes any occurrence pertinent to forestry, reservations, national parks, and kindred subjects. The indebtedness of the club to him for this work is very great. These files always will be a useful reference for anyone interested in the subject.

The articles on the geological conditions of our mountains, such as the domes and their structure, lake ramparts, glacial erosion, may be mentioned among those contributed by men well known in that special work. More particularly might be mentioned the articles on the birds of the mountains and the remarkable photographs connected therewith. Birds of the High Mountains, by Kellogg, numerous articles by Badè, and a very remarkable photograph of the water-ouzel at page 245, volume VI, are worthy of special note.

The reader searching for information on the cone-bearing trees or on the flora of the Yosemite Valley will find authoritative accounts, and throughout all the volumes many have expressed their appreciation in poetry or in prose of the wonders to be found throughout our Sierra Nevada Mountains.

The work of the Sierra Club having been firmly established under the distinguished leadership of John Muir, will not fail now that he is gone, but will continue to broaden its scope and to increase its influence.

THE WAR-ZONE FOREST OF THE KERN

BY WALTER MULFORD

HE Chagoopa Plateau, with its Sky-Parlor Meadow, its Moraine Lake, its forest of subalpine pines, and its rockribbed ring of impressive peaks-what a joy it was! Sunrise over Mount Whitney and the main crest of the Sierra; sunset behind the Great Western Divide, outlined sharply but not harshly across the lake; the climb heavenward to the top of Kaweah; the descent to the beautiful cañon of the Big Arroyo; the brilliant moonlight, making lodgepole and foxtail more impressive and hiding for a time the scars of the grim fight waged by these hardy pines against frost and wind, drought and beetle -to those of us who were there nothing further is needed to recall happy memories of a camp-site richly endowed with charm and interest and comfort. Some of us went on long sidetrips. Some of us, responsive to the influence of high life, indulged in that wild camp cabaret. Some of us even tried to get lost on that confusing plateau. Finally, all of us passed on, more or less thoughtlessly, to other parts of the wonderland.

More or less thoughtlessly! If anyone had asked us whether we would wish the beauty of that high plateau to be permanent, there could have been but one answer. If we had been asked further whether it would still be beautiful without the forest, there would have come an equally emphatic reply. Treeless wastes are fascinating-or repellent. They are often inspiring in their bigness, in their evidence of great power behind and beyond. But they are rarely beautiful. And they are never good places in which to live or camp. Unconsciously we knew that we owed the beauty and comfort of our Chagoopa camp primarily to the forest. Did we stop to wonder whether the forest would be there always?

Perhaps we did not notice the signs of social instability in this community of Chagoopa Forest. Most of the citizens are old folks-several centuries old, although only from one to three feet in diameter. Very many of them are far past their prime,

and their "spike-tops,"* most of which are due to old age or insect attack, show that soon there will be many vacant places in the big family. This must be the case in all communities of trees and people. But the significant thing here is that there are very few youths and almost no children on nearly all of the plateau. And the infirmities of the old folks are likely to increase more than proportionately to their advancing age, as the death of neighbors deprives them of the mutual protection so sorely needed in exposed localities. In the forest world, Chagoopa Town is doomed unless more young trees start in the next half-century.

Nature is wasteful in Chagoopa Forest. Long searches for seedlings were practically fruitless on most parts of the plateau. Young trees were abundant only in a few places. Yet careful counts in one small grove showed an average of 450,000 lodgepole-pine seedlings per acre-more than ten per square foot! Nine hundred and ninety-nine of these must die before the thousandth tree can come to maturity, for mere lack of growing space. Thirty-story, densely thronged tenements in one part of town; thousands of vacant homes with light and air on other streets! There are perhaps six thousand acres on the plateau. There are about six acres in this area of closely packed seedlings. If Nature had spread out on one thousand acres the seedlings she has crowded on one acre, there would be an average of about 450 seedlings per acre over the entire plateau. This would be an admirable basis for the continuance of the community. But Nature rarely does things that way. She has never studied scientific management as man has studied it for the bricklayer.

Chagoopa Plateau is not an exceptional locality as regards uncertainty for the future. On that wonderful day's trip from Crabtree Meadow to Tyndall Creek we were almost constantly in a war zone. Now and again we were in the first line of trenches itself, where the last tree outposts are struggling to hold timber-line where it is. For a time we were in the uncontested territory of the treeless waste, where the forest can never enter unless the climate changes. But on that entire day's trip we were never in the undisputed domain of the forest. The

"Spike-top" means that the upper portion of the tree-crown is dead.

forest is one of Nature's children. She has other children, and she lets them struggle with one another with all the strength and skill at their command. There is a firing-line and a wide war zone in all our high altitudes, where wind and frost shout "Back!" and the stubborn trees cry "Forward!" Through the centuries the battle-line surges back and forth-forward into the waste with discouraging slowness, often backward into the forest with disheartening suddenness. Nature leaves the victory to the stronger forces, and the laurel wreath does not always go to the side which civilized man desires and needs to see win.

Nature is notoriously wasteful, not only in her treatment of these disputed borderlands of the forest realm, but in all forests, even those in which the results of her marvelous handiwork are most awe-inspiring. Here she places too many trees; there, too few. She almost invariably allows the most desirable trees to be more or less displaced by others which are poorer from the standpoint of their usefulness to man. Her trees do not grow nearly so fast as when she takes man's skill into partnership. The difference in time required to produce merchantable trees in timber-producing forests, as between Nature alone and Nature plus constructive man, is so great as to be measured in decades rather than years. Nature's forest was well able to meet the slight needs of savage man. Civilized man, with his vastly greater demands on the forest, must help Nature to mend her ways, else the forest fails.

It is now economically possible for man to assist Nature greatly in the middle-altitude forests of the Sierra-that is, in the great timber-producing zone. Aid of the highest importance is being given in many ways in this belt, thanks to the national forests and the national parks. In the higher zone in which Chagoopa Forest and the Crabtree-Tyndall region are located, we in the United States cannot afford at present to help directly the timber-line forest in its fight. Such help has been given in the Alps and Pyrenees by tree-planting and engineering works, to the great advantage of the valleys below. But our governmental agencies can and are giving powerful indirect help by restricting man as a destructive animal. Chagoopa Forest is in a more precarious condition now than is likely to have been the case before the white man came, because until recently fires