Items of Interest July 3, 1915 Issue

Items of Interest

Mount Lassen, Cal., has become the subject of an informal cooperative study by the geological survey and the forest service. At the request of the survey, a telegram has been sent from Washington instructing the officers of the Lassen national forest, in which the peak stands, to continue observations of the volcano's activity and keep a record to be used as a basis for a scientific investigation by a government geologist, who is expected at Lassen early in July. The observations are being made by forest rangers at the scene and from a fire lookout tower on Brokeoff mountain, a few miles north of the crater, where the forest service last year kept watch on the numerous eruptions which occurred from May to September.

It is not known whether a cloudburst started the last eruption by precipitating rain upon the molten lava in the crater, or whether the melting snow on the peak, with consequent flowing of water into the crater, caused the accumulation of steam which blew a river of mud out of the mountain. The bright glow reported as appearing on the clouds of smoke and steam over the crater is a reflection of the red-hot matter uncovered by the eruption, indicating that the volcano is in a more or less dangerous mood. The river of mud which was shot out of the north side of the crater and down Hat creek, damaged government and private property, destroying bridges which were necessary to permit the entrance of live stock that are grazed on the forest range during the summer. Some twelve thousand cattle and thirty thousand sheep are grazed on the Lassen forest every year. Mount Lassen, inasmuch as it is the only active volcano in the United States proper, according to the geological survey, is regarded as exceptionally interesting, as from its location it is very accessible to observers, and from a scientific view-point presents much in the way of possibilities.

The Supreme Court of the United States, in a decision just handed down, has annulled as unconstitutional the Oklahoma constitutional amendment, and the Annapolis, Md., voters' qualification law restricting the suffrage rights of those who could not vote or whose ancestors could not vote prior to the ratification of the fifteenth amendment to the federal constitution. Chief Justice White, a native of the South and a former Confederate soldier, announced the court's decision, which was unanimous. The court held that conditions that existed before the fifteenth amendment, which provides that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged ... on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude," could not be brought over to the present day in disregard of the self-executing amendment. It is generally believed that the court went a long way toward invalidating much of the so-called "grandfather clause" legislation.

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