Article May 2, 1901 Issue

Noblest American Forest

Pacific Slope Reservation of "Big Trees."

THE recent action of the State of California in appropriating $250,000 to purchase a tract of redwood forest near Santa Cruz for a public reservation has aroused interest in every part of the country, perhaps nowhere more than in this city, where for years an intelligent body of treelovers have urged the necessity of some such step if any part of the redwood lands was to be preserved to future generations in its original glory.

At the Arnold Arboretum the opinion is expressed that the Santa Cruz reservation should be considered as only the entering wedge; other and larger reservations being required if a adequate and typical portion of one of the most remarkable forest growths in the world—by all odds the most remarkable in this country—is to be saved from the ravages of the lumber dealer. The director of the Arboretum, Professor Charles S. Sargent—whose work in charge of the forest investigation of the tenth census, and later as head of the committee of the National Academy appointed to consider the dangers arising from the wholesale destruction of the Western timber lands, was the direct cause of such national forest reservations as we now possess—is not disposed, however, to minimize in the slightest the importance of the action which has been taken. A recent statement of Professor Sargent sums up what has been done as follows:—

"The action the California legislature, which is largely due to the efforts of the Sempervirens Society, a body of Californians organized specially to accomplish the preservation of some part of the redwood forest, is a matter of national rejoicing. The redwood tree (Sequoia sempervirens) is one of the wonders of the world. Its first cousin, the so-called Big Tree of the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, surpasses it in girth of stem, but no other tree in the world attains a larger size, and no North American tree grows so tall."

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