JAMES CLIFFORD SHIRLEY is exceptionally well qualified to present pertinent and interesting information concerning the Redwoods of Coast and Sierra. For five seasons he has been a member of the Yosemite ranger-naturalist organization, and during four of these summers he has been assigned to the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees. Possessing a studious and inquiring mind, he has given numberless hours to the study of the Big Trees, and has supplemented this with studies of other groves, the reading of pertinent literature, and discussions with many of the men and women who are unusually well informed on this subject.

As a ranger-naturalist, Mr. Shirley's principal duty has been informal lecturing upon the Sequoia to the hundreds of thousands of visitors to Mariposa Grove from all parts of this country and the world. Quite possibly, he has answered every thinkable question about these trees (some of the answers inevitably being the simple statement, "We do not know"). His knowledge of the things that people desire to know about the Big Trees is reflected not only in his material, but also in his painstaking preparation of it.

His book is presented with full confidence in its factual content and with a strong conviction that a fuller knowledge of these survivors of other epochs will lead to a deep feeling for their beauty and their significance, and, in addition, a serious realization of the necessity of their preservation for the pleasure and inspiration of our children's children.

C. G. THOMSON
Superintendent of Yosemite National Park

MARIPOSA GRROVE MUSEUM AND SIERRA REDWOOD, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, AND MEMBERS OF THE GOVERNMENT FIELD SCHOOL OF NATURAL HISTORY. Courtesy of Yosemite National Park

They say that in California there are still many giant sequoias (the big redwood trees) which were growing in the time of David, and were fine trees at the time of Christ, and were really worth looking at in the time of Shakespeare, and are world famous today, and are still not at their best. I lay awake last night thinking of it with a kind of awe, of that enormous blind calm power and will to live. . . . I went afterwards to see those trees. . . . They are not like trees, they are like spirits. The glens in which they grow are not like places, they are like haunts—haunts of the centaurs or of the gods. The trees rise up with dignity, power, and majesty, as though they had been there forever. . . .Sometimes in cathedrals one feels the awe and the majesty of columns. These columns were more impressive than anything of stone; these columns were alive. They were more like gods than anything I have ever seen. They seemed to be thinking. One felt that presently they would march to wipe out everything mean or base or petty here on earth. The stars shone about their heads like chaplets.

—Excerpts from letters written by the poet who is now the English poet laureate; from THE TAKING OF HELEN AND OTHER PROSE SELECTIONS, by John Masefield. By permission of the Macmillan Company, publishers.