The San Francisco call., 1895-05-20
AGRICULTURAL STATIONS,
Experimental Farms Have Been Opened
by the University at Pomona and
Santa Monica.

George Hansen, manager of the ST.
ezra Foothill Agricultural Experiment
Station at Jackson, Amador County, has
been sent by Professor E. W. Hilgard, di-
rector of the agricultural department,
University of California. to the south to
survey and lay out the stations at Pomona
and Santa Monica.
The Pomona station is situated in the
very midst of well-settled and beautiful
country, about equally distant from Po-
mona, Chino and Ontario. The popula-
tion thereabouts takes great interest in
the work going on at the station and it is
the intention of the department to make
the grounds around the residence as at
tractive as possible. A reservoir of 60
feet diameter offers splendid opportunity
to display waterlilies ana aquatic plants !;
a corner of poor soil will be devoted to
rockery. furnished with cactus, opuntias,
aloes, yuccas, etc.. a garden of economic
plants will be prettily designed and well
stocked, and a lawn will connect all the
places of attraction.
At Santa Monica the University has ac-
quired from the abolished State Board of
Forestry place most beautifully located,
though but partially improved. The new
survey by Mr.. Hansen will be the begin
ming of the systematical improvement con-
templated. The foreman's cottage over
looks beautiful slope of the middle bench
in the Santa Monica Canyon and the view
opens over the ocean and the long wharf of
the Southern Pacific Railroad.
The appropriations for the forestry sta
tions for the time since the University
| manages the property have started only
from the last session of the Legislature, but
the careful management of the agricultural
department will soon tell on the grounds
SO well formed and shaped by nature.
Mr.. Hansen's career from his arrival in
California is but an example of how won-
derful the ways of life work. 1t is eight
years ago since he was neighbor to the
hardheaded octogenarian selling news
papers around Lotta's Fountain, and sold
his punches of violets in the company of
the gamin found there at any day. But in
those surroundings he well preserved the
Royal College of Horticulture at Potsdam,
Berlin.
On the strength of his surveys, maps and
like work, he was given chance to
prove his worth in the university grounds,
and he soon was sent to Jackson to pioneer
his way when establishing the lovely sta
tion he now calls his home. The remote
ness of his place, twenty miles from rail-
road, has prompted him to devote all his
spare time to the exploration of the fora
of his neighborhood, and every leave of
| absence from his charge was applied to a
trip in the Sierras, his wife accompanying
him on all his botanizing expeditions.
A well-written booklet, "Where the Big
Trees Crow tells his experience and gives
his impressions about those gigantic mon
uments of past ages in such affectionate
words that his book is regarded Just as
worthy from a literary view as all botan-
lists have considered it from scientific.
! Nearly one dozen plants have been dis
| covered as new to science by Mr.. Hansen,
| and part of them received his name as
| species from the professors classifying his
collections. The list of species has in
| creased to almost nine hundred, and
| many universities here and abroad have
| favored him with orders for his collection.
The Stanford University and the Shaw
Botanical Garden at St. Louis, Mo-, have
applied to him, and from abroad the uni
versities at London, Berlin, Geneva, st.
Petersburg. Vienna and Breslau.