L. W. Currey, Inc.

FRY, WALTER and JOHN R. WHITE. Big Trees by Walter Fry ... and John R. White. Stanford University, California: Stanford University Press. London: Humphrey Milford Oxford University Press, [1938]. 21.5x13.6 cm (octavo), pp. [i-vi] vii-xi [xii] xiii [xiv] xv-xvi [1-2] 3-126, 27 illustrations, 2 maps (one reproduced twice on the endpapers), original pictorial green cloth, front, spine and rear panels stamped in dark brown. Second edition, revised. Signed on the title page by both authors, Walter Fry, United States Commissioner, Sequoia National Park, and John R. White, Superintendent, Sequoia National Park. A fine, early survey of the natural history of the big trees. Pages 97-108 give a useful grove-by-grove summary of seventy-one known stands of giant sequoia. Two chapters provide information on the early human history of the Sequoia and Kings Canyon High Sierra. Pages 10-13 quote a statement Fry obtained in 1910 from Hale Tharp, the first European man to see the big trees of the Sierra region. In 1858 Tharp, led by two local Indians, made his first trip to the Giant Forest to locate a summer range for cattle and to verify the existence of the big trees. In 1860 Tharp and his son-in-law, John Swanson, made two trips into the Kings River and Sequoia high country, the first into Kings Canyon via Giant forest, and the second to Mineral King Valley. From 1861 to 1890 Tharp used the Giant Forest as his summer range. Pages 24-28 print the text of a letter to White from George W. Stewart that provides a personal record of local effort to preserve the sequoia groves of the southern Sierra. Stewart, editor of the Visalia Delta, played a major role during the campaign to establish Sequoia National Park. A fine copy in very good pictorial dust jacket with light wear at spine ends and corner tips and clipped price. (#166036).