propriation was $291,000, with 250 employees; in 1904-the fiscal year just ended-an appropriation of $350,000 was provided, with some 300 employees; and for the coming fiscal year an appropriation of $425,000 has been made, with over 350 employees.

The Bureau of Forestry has thus, within a few years, become one of the great institutions of the Government; nor has it advanced beyond the growth of public sentiment; indeed it is scarce keeping pace with that sentiment, for the country has suddenly become alive to the necessity for this rational forestry policy. The preservation of the forests affects other interests besides those of lumber and wood supply. Streams are dependent for the continuity of their flow upon forest protection. The forest has been well likened to a great sponge which absorbs the bulk of the rainfall, allowing it gradually to find its way into the water courses through the medium of springs and brooks, thus furnishing an equable and perennial flow. Cut away this forest cover, leave the hills and the valleys bare and denuded, and the rainfall rushes down the unresisting slopes in torrential flow, cutting away the surface soil, creating gullies if not gulches, and leaving the ground in a short time dry and parched and the streams low in water. The evils of forest destruction in the watersheds have come home to many sections of the country, both east and west. It needs but a moment's intelligent consideration to see that the water supply of almost every city and town is menaced by reckless lumbering and forest destruction, while destructive floods are to a like extent augmented. In the West, where the water is the lifeblood of the land, being used for irrigation, forest destruction holds out fatal prospects. So the more intelligent communities are now not only striving to prevent deforestation, but are appropriating local funds to be used in co-operation with the national expenditures for reforesting bare slopes once timbered, which will then act as natural storage reservoirs for snow and water.

Irrational Opposition

Forest work and forestry education have been by no means an unopposed for

hailed as a benefactor of the section, a creator of industry, and a distributer of wealth. The people have forgotten that the money would soon be exhausted, and the section left but a barren waste resembling a deserted mining camp. In fact, the bulk of the population in most of such cases have been but fleeting birds of prey, ready to move on to another timber belt-an ephemeral development and temporary prosperity, placing much money in circulation, but regardless of permanent results.

Rational forestry, however, does not contemplate placing a fence around a tim

EXAMPLE OF EROSION, SAN BERNARDINO FOREST RESERVE,
CALIFORNIA.

Washed gully in foreground. Bull pine forest
in background.

ber tract and erecting signs, "Keep out." The most serious apprehension regarding

the creation of forest reserves and the scientific methods of forestry to follow, was that the policy would kill or largely curtail the lumbering industry. To this objection Forester Pinchot makes the notable response:

"I am not a preserver of trees. I am a cutter-down of trees. It is the essence of forestry to have trees harvested when they are ripe, and followed by successive crops. The human race is not destroyed because the individual dies. Every individual must die, but the race lives on. So every tree must die, but the forest will be extended and multiplied. It by no means follows that the face of the land shall be denuded so that the character of the

watershed shall be altered, with the resulting injury to streams and to agricultural lands dependent upon them."

There is inspiration, says William E. Smythe, in the work to which Gifford Pinchot has set his hand. He is not only aiming to establish a forestry system under which existing timber belts shall yield their product forever in regular crops, but to make trees spring into life where they have been wantonly destroyed, and even where they have never grown within the memory of living man. His is not a work alone of government forest management. His Bureau is working in close and in close and constant cooperation with the owners of private forest lands. Applications have already been received for government instruction and co-operation in the handling of over five million acres of private forests; and the advice of the Forester is constantly sought by forest land holders, ranging in extent from the farm wood lot to the great estate. Mr. Pinchot's methods and policy have won the respect and attention of all classes. One of his first statements following his appointment to his present position, was that he fully acknowledged the hard business sense of the American lumberman; that he did not expect to be able to instruct him in lumbering methods; but that he did believe he could show the owners of timber tracts, where, by the cost of a few cents an acre, their timber tracts could be lumbered and then left in a condition to produce another crop of timber, rather than to become waste and practically worthless land.

Tree Planting

Forestry is most broad and comprehenThe work engaging the Bureau of

sive. It even includes tree planting, which is not a branch of forestry in its strict sense; and many sections, particularly in the West, can attest to the beneficial effects upon the climate which have resulted from the planting of thousands of acres to trees. Large areas of the once "treeless plains" are now thickly interspersed with wood lots and with checkerboards of wind-breaks. Nebraska claims upwards of 200,000 acres planted trees; and Kansas, 150,000 acres. Of these, the cottonwood, the ash, the black walnut, the catalpa, the locust, the

of

The working force of the Bureau of Forestry is variable. Mr. Pinchot's policy contemplates not only present forest results, but the training and education of men to carry on the rapidly increasing work of his Bureau. It has been difficult to secure enough trained foresters to enable the Government to push forward its plans. An inspiring sight greeted the writer at a recent fortunate visit to the Bureau. Nearly a hundred young men, fresh from technical forestry college courses, were congregated about the various offices of the Bureau, shaking each others' hands, and conversing eagerly and enthusiastically over their proposed field work for the coming season. They were about entering upon a postgraduate course in forestry-practical field work, where they would be turned loose in the woods, to apply, under technical guidance, some of their theoretical knowledge, and grow into real foresters. The pay of these young men, outside of their expenses, is nominal; but the Forester says that while it is looked upon as a privilege to secure such an appointment, and while the boys are inexperienced and green, yet the Govern

practical workmen for future use, pecuniarily benefits by the practice, since these

building up a corps of young, vigorous, and practical forest experts possessing an esprit de corps perhaps second to that of no government bureau.

Urgent Need of National Action The time for the prosecution of national forest work on a large scale is critical. Vast acreages of the nation's best forests have been squandered; and the forces of greed and cupidity are still working to build up great private fortunes regardless of the rights of the people or the good of the nation. It is in the great West that our forest wealth now lies. A further wave of public education must sweep forward before the country will realize that certain radical changes are wise and necessary. The Government is still a great forest owner; that is, the people of the country own the remaining public lands and timber.

ernment should practically give away this great resource; rather, it should administer it for the good of the whole people-those of to-day and those of tomorrow and, in doing so, it should claim a legitimate revenue.

A principle was laid down to the writer, regarding forest management, by a government official, which will appeal to every business man in the country. He said:

"The Government is spending half a million dollars a year, getting nothing for it except indirectly. It should be spending five or six million dollars a year, and getting five or six or perhaps eight million dollars from such expenditure. Our forests should be self-sustaining. They should be cropped-the ripe trees harvested."

The President of the United States understands our forest problem better, perhaps, than any previous American. President, though great credit is due to