nia. South
of the Pass of Tehachapi, people are dependent upon irrigation. Here,
too, lie wheat fields and also rich vineyards, and the precious orchards
of oranges and lemons; further south the equally valuable walnut and
almond groves.

The seven Forest Reserves of southern California may be regarded as one
almost continuous tract embracing about 4,000,000 acres, lying on either
side of the crest of the Coast Range; they are economically of enormous
importance to California, but not on account of their timber. In many
cases they are forest reserves without trees; for example, the little
Trabuco Canyon Reserve, which has but a handful of Coulter pines, and on
the northern slope a few scattered spruce. The western slope of the
foothills of the San Jacinto, San Bernardino, San Gabriel, Zaca Lake and
Pine Mountain, and Santa Ynez reserves, are clad only in chaparral, yet
the preservation of these hillsides from fire is of vital importance to
the people, since the mantle of vegetation protects, to a certain
degree, the sources of the streams from which the supply of water is
derived. In this country they believe that water is life; thus harking
back to the teaching of the Father of Philosophy, to Thales of Miletus,
who lived six hundred years before Christ: "The principle of all things
is water, all comes from water, and to water all returns." Such trees as
there are here possess unusual interest; approaching the crest of the
mountains one finds a scattered growth of pines--the Coulter, ponderosa,
Jeffrey's, the glorious sugar pine, the _Pinus contorta_, and
_Pinus flexilis_, the single leaf or nut pine, and, in scattered
tracts, the queer little knob-cone pine. Red and white firs are found,
the incense cedar, the Douglas spruce, the big cone spruce, and a number
of deciduous trees, mainly oaks of several varieties, with sycamore
along the lower creeks, and the alder tree, strikingly like the alder
bush of our eastern streams and pastures, but of Gargantuan proportions,
grown out of all recognition. Scattered representatives of other species
are found--the maple, cherry, dogwood, two varieties of sumac, the yerba
del pasmo (or bastard cedar), madronos, walnut, mesquite, mountain
mahogany, cottonwood, willow, ash, many varieties of bushes, also the
yucca, mescal, cactus, etc. I have given but a bald enumeration of
these; the forming of an acquaintance with so many new trees, shrubs,
and flowering herbs is of great interest,