the cut-away coat are flapping up and down incessantly like nothing so much as a pair of animated flails. How detestable-how odiously ungraceful is that nondescript thing which has been dignified with the title of "hop waltz!" Hop it is, most certainly but waltz! no maniac in his wildest dreams ever conceived of such a form of waltzing as this. Verily, Eduarda shines a very queen of the dance in this crowd.

Shelton bent down to her : "Let us go on. It is a sin to lose this.' The girl had forgotten his illness, forgot ten everything, in the charm of the music and the touch of his hand upon her. Again the music was throbbing in their veins, and they were gliding on and on-out into a future of longing pleasure and passionate pain.

The music ceased suddenly, and the dance was ended. Leaning upon the back of Eduarda's chair, Shelton felt a deathly faintness come over him. The stimulus of the music and the magnetism of her touch were withdrawn-and this was the reaction. he cannot go yet.

But

"Partners for a quadrille!" comes from the lofty nose above the lavender trousersand Shelton stood up for a duty dance beside Mrs. Newman,

He saw the couples ranging themselves in long lines facing each other on opposite sides of the room, and cast a quick interrogative glance toward his partner.

'It's a Spanish quadrille, I reckon," Mrs. Newman said, answering his glance. Opposite them the diminutive Gov'nor was bowing before a large lady in black-a six-footer weighing three hundred if a pound. "See that there boy a dancin' with ole Mis' Grimes," said the fond parent. "I'll bet she ast him."

A tall man, heavily bearded, had mounted the barrel beside the musicians, the music struck up and the tall man shouted in stentorian tones:

ners! Ladies' chain! Balance yer partners! Swing!" Shelton found himself swung and swung by each lady in succession until his head was fairly spinning, Then his partner came to him again, the music ceased and there was a breathing spell.

The music began again. The stentorian voice of the prompter was again heard:

"First couple polka around!" and the Gov'nor and his three-hundred pounder go about in lively style. "First gentleman cross over!" The Gov'nor drops the leviathan and comes to Shelton. They join hands behind Mrs. Newman's back, each taking one of her hands. "Forward threes along the line." Back, turning Mrs. Newman and throwing their joined hands in front of her. Then forward again, bringing Mrs. Newman's arms into theirs by a simple They clap their hands-and the leviathan is bearing down upon them. In an instant she has seized the Gov'nor-and all about them giddy couples are whirling to places.

turn.

Again the music ceased for an instant. Then it began again.

"Balance yer partners! All promenade! Next!" and each gentleman drops back to the lady next behind him. So they go until they regain their original partners. "Once and a half around!" Mrs. Newman locks her right elbow into that of Shelton and whirls him around. Then the next lady seizes him by the other elbow and whirls him in the opposite direction: So it goes-right elbow and left elbow-around the circle, "All join hands! Molinetto!" In an instant the lavender trousers have broken the ring and their wearer is hopping up and down toward the center of the room, pulling the line after him. He approaches a lady and gentleman and, ducking his head, dives under their clasped hands. All the dancers follow him, ducking their heads. In and out he goes, hopping backward and forward, through here and under there, twisting and turning the long line of dancers about in

well-nigh inextricable confusion--but, no matter how intricate the twist and turn, never breaking hands and never ceasing hopping. "Balance yer partners! Swing!" and all at once the line breaks up and the dancers are again whirling about to places. "Grand right an' left! Promenade! Seats!" The queer quadrille is ended.

Shelton, thoroughly exhausted, excused himself and feed the Gov'nor to drive him home-but long after he had smoked a cigar to quiet his nerves, and long after he had sought his restless pillow, the dreamy music of that waltz was ringing in his ears, and he felt again the throb of longing that swept

over him as the warm wealth of her bronze hair brushed against his breast.

Even in dreaming his body swayed to the rhythm of the music-and in the morning, arising unrefreshed from fitful slumber, he caught himself muttering to his ten by twelve inch looking glass.

"Edna Smmers never in her life can reach the perfection of poetic motion that is born in this girl."

He did not say, as an Oriental would have done, that one woman's step was to the other's as the waving of palm branches to the stately swaying of tall pines.

S. N. Sheridan, Jr.

The California State Board of Forestry is now engaged in making an accurate forest map and a complete report on the condition of the forests of California. We are also using every effort to stop the fires that do our forests so much damage, and the stealing of timber from the School Sections of the public domain.

We are much hampered in our work by the indifference of the people and by the lack of officers and men to carry out our wishes. The Forest map and report required an engineer and assistants, whom we were obliged to take without any forest training. But the energy and interest they have thus far shown in the work will, we trust, compensate for their lack of technical training.

Our plan and work strain our finances greatly, and unless further aid is given us by the next legislature we shall be unable to complete our map. This year's report will contain a forest map of those portions of the State that we shall have thus far surveyed. It was deemed best to do well what

we could, rather than to make a hasty and inaccurate map, which would necessarily be largely based on guess work.

Califor

Nowhere in the United States is a preservation of the watersheds from undue denudation, and the forests from waste and the destruction of their reproductive power, so essential as in that part west of and including the Rocky Mountain Range. nia is especially likely to be greatly injured, if not altogether ruined as a home for any considerable population, if proper measures are not taken to preserve her forests and watersheds. The State has two great ranges of mountains running through its length, with many minor ranges near them or connecting them. From these mountains, where the snow and rain are precipitated, come the streams and rock-veins containing the water of our springs. We depend largely on these for irrigation. In some parts of the country irrigation is absolutely necessary for the support of the present population, to say nothing of that which is to This water is also needed for stock,

come.

for domestic use, and for the supply of cities. Our long dry season demands a perennial supply of water for the farms, fruit orchards, and cities. The existence of this supply depends on the preservation of the receptive power of the mountains for water. This again depends on these mountains. being covered with trees and brush to attract the rain and so detain it after and as it falls as to allow the water to penetrate into the ground and rocks, from which it can emerge slowly and during a long period. The trees also prevent the too sudden melting of the snow, which is itself a reservoir much depended on for irrigation in California.

Without our forests the extremes of heat and cold, of flood and drought, and of wind, would be far greater than now. Thus the lovely climate of California, on which the prosperity of the State so much depends, would be injured by a continuance of the present improvidence in forest management.

No state is more liable to the creation of terrible and destructive torrents than California, with its long dry season and steep Sierras. If the mountains be denuded of their present covering of verdure, torrents must form, taking off the soil and rocks to cover the valley farms and destroy them.

A supply of lumber and firewood in perpetuity should be provided by a reasonable exploitation of the forests, which now are. being deprived by fire and wasteful methods of their reproductive capacity—not as yet in all parts of California, but very generally in the south and east of the State.

It may not be uninteresting to know what forest denudation, only now beginning in earnest, is doing in California. I condense the following from an account of the phenomena of the floods of January 1886 and their significance, written by myself at the time for a local paper.

These floods were very damaging in Southern California. The bridges and a

$10,000 dike in Los Angeles, together with many houses and five human beings, were swept away. The railroads were damaged and destroyed at the Tejungas and in the Soledad, Cajon, and Temecula passes, and our local road lost culverts, had embankments damaged, and also had its passenger station washed away. These larger losses by flood were not the only ones. There were losses amongst the farmers and orchardists of land and soil, caused by washes and cuts. Streams took new courses and these washes and cuts occurred where water never before ran.

The causes of such unexpected rushes of water, sand, and boulders as then took place in the San Gabriel River, in the Soledad, and the two Tejungas, are worthy of attention. Then the causes of all those entirely new water courses that have been formed within three years in the San Fernando, San Rafael, and San Gabriel valleys, and on the recently opened lands near the Mojave desert, should be studied and done away with. If these causes are allowed to increase as they have done during the last three years, then, judging by the damage done within that time, a serious and permanent destruction of values will take place in this country. Many lands now producing and paying taxes will do so no longer. Many families now well off will live to see their property swept out of exist

ence.

What are these causes?

About six years ago I settled in the San Gabriel Valley. The road to my ranch from Los Angeles passed through what is now the town of Pasadena (then consisting of one store, a school-house, and a number of orchards). The road passed on across the San Pasquale ranch, most of which was then used to pasture sheep.

between the Arroyo Seco and Precipica Cañon there was not a single water course, not one place where, through pebbles or cuts, a water channel could be recognized.

During my residence, until less than three years ago, no water ever ran across the San Pasquale ranch between the points named. While these lands enjoyed an immunity from torrents, the foothills and mesas were covered with native growths of brush and chapparal, scrub oaks, greasewood, sage brush, and so forth. Every succeeding year has seen more of this covering removed from the land by clearing or by fire, until now nearly all the mesas are completely bare of verdure. Trees and bushes, and in fact all vegetable growths, have a great power of holding rain water and retarding its flow until it has time to sink into the earth. The leaves, twigs, and branches intercept the rain-drops and diminish their force. The roots, and the fallen leaves and sticks, hold back the water and divide its currents. Besides this, these impediments protect the soil so that it does not cut; thus the water does not get into well defined channels where it can concentrate its force. The humus, or soil of the forest and brush land, has remarkable powers of absorbing moisture. It is like a sponge in this respect, a quality of the greatest importance to perennial springs. Thus the destruction of the bushes has caused another change. The rains that were formerly absorbed on these lands are no longer taken in. Torrents have been born; orchards, vineyards, roads, fields, and fences, formerly safe, and which no one ever thought exposed to floods, have been damaged, partially destroyed, or altogether washed away.

Three winters ago a torrent, now very plain, crossed for the first time several orchards and ranches in this vicinity. Winter before last, though the rains were so light, this torrent ran several times. Last winter the heavy rains caused much injury along its line. Orange trees and hedges were rooted up and carried off. In some places, deep gullies were cut, in others sand and gravel were deposited, in one or two places to the extent of several feet in thick

ness.

Moreover, the torrent now cut farther and reached the county road where it was joined by another new water course. This new one came down the Villa road to the Mission, tearing the road to pieces as it came. The two joined washed away many lemon trees, and injured or carried off fences and gates. Thence they went on, cutting deep gullies in a road that connected several residents with the school-house of the district, making it completely impassable; then devastated a pasture field, cut up the main road from Rose's and the St. Anita to the Mission, and seriously injured lands below this road.

Another torrent on the San Pasquale came down Allen Street, cutting the lands of several residents, and crossing Villa Avenue made that avenue impassable. Two more crossed the same roads, by different channels; and farther east, where land owners had cleared the foothill lands extensively, several torrents originated that went on down into the valley, injuring the lands of a number of men, besides tearing the county road into holes and ditches that made it dangerous to travel.

On the upper part of this district I have had for some years a ditch bringing water out of Precipica Cañon to irrigate my lower lands. This ditch ran along a bluff that had no cut or marks of a stream passing over it. Three winters ago a cut began which obliged me to bridge with a flume the chasm made. Last winter it was more deeply cut by what must have been a large body of water, which rolled out great boulders, dropped my flume bridge and left a great projecting talus of glittering rock where before no such thing was seen.

These water cuts are new in the country. If they have not resulted from the lessening of the power of the upper lands to hold water by the removal of the brush, then what has caused them? It cannot be heavier rains than formerly, because winter before last there was a small rainfall, still that year water ran in these new torrent beds.

The burning of the brush and forests on the watershed of the Soledad has been followed by floods that have been so destructive to the railroad as to interrupt travel and in fact all communication for considerable lengths of time. One stock raiser from Ravenna set fire last year to the forests in the Sierra Madre Mountains, in this water shed, to improve his range, he said. Several hunters from San Gabriel were witnesses of the affair. So the watershed of the Soledad does not hold water as well as it used to. The two Tejungas are in the same condition. Greater bodies of sand, boulders, and water come down them than before; consequently great injury has been done to farms, and the railroad embankments and bridges, renewed and strengthened from the previous floods, were last winter again washed away. Within the last few years the water-sheds of these streams have been denuded of timber and trees for the brick kilns and fires of Los Angeles, while wasteful and unscientific methods of cutting have prevented a new growth. Fires from carelessness, and often willfully set, have destroyed still more of the native growth,

The attention of the Los Angeles Board of Trade was some time ago called to the consequences of the wasteful and thoughtless destruction of the covering of the mountains around us. It was urged that our mountains are so steep as to be totally unavailable for agriculture and for the most part for everything, except attracting and distributing moisture. This, their only use, should not be destroyed and the blessing of wooded hill and perennial springs changed to the curse of bleak, rocky peaks and dried up fountains. The rains from such peaks would descend in torrents, devastating the country with sand, rocks, and water. What is verdant plain and fertile orchard now would then be beds of glittering gravel. After the meeting several gentlemen spoke to me of the importance of this matter, among others a large real estate dealer Mr.

M. L. Wicks, a very keen business man. He told me that the preceding summer some three thousand acres of land belonging to him in the Tejunga Valley were burned over, and brush and trees on the mountain sides destroyed. The rains of last winter came down from these bared mountain flanks, washed out land, and made barrancas that are impassable for teams, where no water-marks were before known. This in

one year. He thought action should be taken to put an end to such criminal carelessness as is shown in our annually destructive mountain fires. Mr. Frank A. Gibson spoke similarly. Mr. E. T. Wright, the county surveyor, than whom no one is better able to judge, took the same view and said that during the preceding summer a fire had been started on the San Rafael ranch, which burned over a mountain behind some of his land. That winter a torrent came down that washed away three acres of his property in a place where there was no track before.

The same facts have been observed all along the foot hills and mesas of the San Gabriel Valley. Mr. P. L. Washburn, of the Los Angeles Herald, who owns four hundred acres in the southern end of Kern County, this side of the Tehachapi, tells me that a similar state of things is going on in that section. He travels over that country in going to his place, and he says that summer before last alone, probably owing to the large influx of settlers, 50,000 acres of brush and forest land were burned off on the north side of the Sierra Madre range, from the Cajon Pass west to the mountains where he is. Consequent upon this the water is cutting gullies in numerous places and is running during the rains in dangerous and destructive torrents. He spoke of one instance on the Cottonwood Creek where a man had ten acres of corn land swept away by a new torrent that originated in a twice burned off mountain.

Torrents caused great damage last winter in San Luis Obispo, Ventura, San Bernar