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The Forest of Texas.

UCH has been said about Texas cotton, cattle, oil and rice. Less mention has been made of the "forest," which is valuable on account of the quantity and quality of material produced, ease of exploitation, conversion and transportation, and its proximity to the treeless plains.

A few individuals have in their possession 80 per cent. of all the long-leaf pine in the State (1,250,000 acres). These lands were purchased at a comparatively low rate, and the company is now realizing a big profit on its investment from its extensive lumbering operations.

Within the last few years it has become a question whether the productivity of the forest keeps pace with the increasing demands made upon it by the mills. How can the two, production and consumption, be made to equalize, and a constant supply of material derived?

This information has been requested of the Bureau of Forestry, which has sent a number of men into Texas, who are spending the winter upon the tract, making an exhaustive study, and gathering the necessary data for a complete "working plan." For the present, a description of the forest, apart from commercial and economic considerations, will be appropriate.

The tract is situated in the eastern part of the State, between the Sabine river on the east, the Trinity on the west, with grassy savannas on the south and cultivated fields on the north.

Within these bounds occur two decidedly different forest types, each of which has long ago selected its own territory, and has since maintained it inviolably. Soil requirements have here, as elsewhere, been the main consideration in determining whether the forest should be one of "pine" or of hardwood.

The river-bottoms" comprise the flat plains along the Sabine, Netches and Trinity rivers, as far inland as they are periodically immersed by the overflow, which is seldom more than a few miles. During the expansion period these streams deposit a rich calcareous sediment, which they derive from limestone regions farther north and hold in suspension until their velocities are impeded and their carrying capacities diminished. By a continual repetition of this process, the river-bottoms have become remarkably fertile and capable of sustaining a hardwood forest, which, if not very valuable at present, is destined soon to become so.

An excursion to the Netches will at once reveal the character of the forest. The river is "up," as they say. The banks are full, the current even and swift; all along as far as the eye can see, which is only a short distance (for here the river turns), occur massy oaks, gums, cypresses, etc., all clothed in hoary polypod (Polypodium incarnum) and draped and festooned with long moss (tillandsia usueoides). This gray mass is again offset by the deep green foliage of magnolia fetida.

Over to the left there is a bayou, across which the fisherman paddles his canoe in silence, while from the thickets emanate the varied songs of birds. Soon the retreating sun will awake the dormant alligator and arouse the sluggish moccassin.

The river-bottoms furnish a fertile field for the student of trees, shrubs, plants, insects and animals; but for the free-air disposition, for the lover of the park-like arrangement, there is nothing to equal the piney woods.

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Forestry and Lumbering.

T the Annual Meeting of the National Wholesale Lumber Dealers' Association, held in Washington on March 4th and 5th, Mr. Gifford Pinchot, Forester of the Department of Agriculture, made an address on the relation between forestry and lumbering, from which the following is excerpted:

The invitation which came to me to-night to meet you here reflects the most potent scene in the whole field of forestry progress in the United States; not for what it is, but for what it portends. It is rather curious that the great movements of this kind run in cycles; curious that this forest movement into which we are just reaching, planning for effort and accomplishment, began with the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. They came from a country where forests had been protected, where the value of woods was known, and where the whole tendency was to look out for the resources; and as soon as they landed on the shores of this country, with nearly 3000 miles of forests in front of them, one of the first things they did was to regulate the size of timber to be cut for cordwood and to preserve the remainder. Then came the great spread of our pioneers all over the west, the movement which, following the Civil War, carried railroad building through our country as never before. The old feeling for the forest died out, because there was no apparent justification for it, and then the greatest area of forest destruction man has ever seen began. That area is now culminating in the United States, but has not reached its culmination.

- When persons interested in forestry first began to adopt the subject of forest preservation in the United States they were a long way ahead of the economic movement of the day. They began by calling upon the lumberman of Bangor to suppress his greed, not thinking at all, as the foresters of the present day, that the lumberman is a business man, engaged in an honorable calling and swayed by the same motives. We understand now that as forestry methods will be applied in this day they will be worth while from a business-point of view. These early pioneers advocated the introduction of German methods in this country and proposed and exalted things that every lumberman knew were absolutely impossible. They directed their attention to replacing the forests, that had been destroyed, along lines with which we have to take account, but not along our line of keeping the forests from being destroyed when lumbering. There are just a few things that can be said of the forest movement in a very few words. the first place, what forestry is is simply the ap

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plication of common-sense to the problem of forest preservation. It is a method of protecting the lumber industry, and without it the industry cannot be protected. It is a method to bring about a new crop on the ground. It is eating your cake and having it, too, in a very real sense. It is treating the forest as a crop and not dealing with it as with a mine. When you dig the mineral out of a mine it is gone for good; when you take the timber out of a forest, if you apply the methods of practical forestry to the land in a simple, common-sense way, that is going to bring results; and it is all based on the primary question, will it pay?

Let us

If forestry will not pay then it is absolutely no use talking to you or any other body of business men about the application of forestry in the United States. We have got to show that forestry will pay. In order to show that, we have got to get certain effects in particular forests which are not now valuable. Suppose one of you gentlemen who owns an area of forest-land made to the Secretary of Agriculture a request for assistance along the lines he spoke of a few months ago. What you would want to know would be what stands on your land; what your land will produce under certain definite methods of management ; what those methods are, and whether the result at the end of a given number of years will pay taxes and interest and a profit on investment. take a single acre as an illustration. We find out on this tract how many 5-inch spruce, how many 6-inch, how many 7, 8, and so on up there are on the average per acre. It is found that the average spruce tree grows slowly, say an inch in diameter in seven years. The department uses a basis of an 11-inch tree and decides that it will recommend to you to cut off all trees above 11 inches in diameter. You will know then that you can get, say, 2500 feet to the acre. You have a definite number of 9, 10 and 11-inch trees left. In so many years these trees will have grown; in twenty-one years, say, a 9-inch tree will have grown to be a 12-inch tree, an 8-inch tree will have grown to 11 inches, and you know how many there are, how many are likely to die, and you know, approximately, what the price of spruce is going to be at that time, figuring on the present basis. Then you have the proposition of

a simple mathematical calculation. In twenty years we will say your crop has reached 2500 feet, in thirty years, 3500 feet. There you have the essence of the whole thing.

I believe that agriculture is simply a higher use to which the soil should be put; that agriculture would be of more use to the country on the flat lands and in the valleys than forestry.

You know far better than I do the conditions of the forests of the country as to supply and demand. The white pine industry in the northwestern states reached its culmination about 1890, and has been sliding down ever since, and millmen and men of the west and south have had a big stimulus in the production of yellow pine. In the extreme west the production has been largely depreciated by fire. It has been estimated that in western Washington 20 per cent. has been cut and 22 per cent., or 46,000,000,000 feet, has been burned, a dead loss absolutely to everybody. The introduction of practical forestry means the use of timber, instead of its destruction by fire or the equally reprehensible destruction by unintelligent lumbering. I have no interest whatever in the protection of the forest per se; a standing forest, unless it serves some useful purpose, serves me not at all, except from the purely esthetic side, but I want it distinctly understood that our position is that forestry protection is a means and not an end, as the President said in his message in 1901; and if our forests are of no use then forestry is of no use. Forest preservation is not a fad. The saw-mill has built up the country, and if it has done harm in one direction, it has done enormous good in another. But we are reaching a point of time where progress in production can no longer be fed for any length of time by the use of new species as substitutes, as the hemlock succeeded white pine in Pennsylvania, as red pine has been substituted for white pine in Michigan. That proposition is no longer tenable, and we have to look squarely in the face the question of whether or not the lumber industry is to be preserved.

I need not tell a gathering such as this how vital to the interests of a country a timber-supply is. We know something from practical experience what a coal famine is; we shall not learn for many years what a wood famine is, but we are enormously overcutting the production of our forests. East of the Mississippi we have just about half of the product of timber-lands that we had when the country was settled, and the only thing which can be relied upon to protect your industry and the enormous interests which depend upon it is forestry. We have to consider from now on that the forest is a crop; that methods of renewing it are just as vital to you, who are interested in cutting it down, as to those interested in building it up. You have got to eliminate, as we foresters have already eliminated, the differences in the points of view between lumbermen and foresters, and it is one of the great delights of my work to find that you understand, as we do, that the lumberman is much nearer the forester, and the forester the lumberman, than any other

class.

We are the axe that does the work; you are the helve which serves to give it direction. If we cannot work with you, who own 50,000 square miles of timber-if we cannot work with you in preserving that timber and keeping it productive, then we shall not work effectively for the preservation of the forests of the United States. If we cannot work with you, if our proposition does not commend itself to you, and if we cannot have your support, we may as well stop. We can attend to the forestry of the government or of the States, but first or last the great bulk of the forest lands of the United States passes through the hands of the lumberman, and upon their attitude depend the huge interests of this country in the protection of its timber-supply.

Gentlemen, I have been asked, in addition to these remarks about forestry, to say a word or two about forest conditions in the Philippines. I was fortunate enough to have a six weeks' trip out there. I found a heavy area of timbered lands, productive forests, running down to the water's edge, most of it in admirable condition for lumbering, and easily accessible. The demand for lumber in the islands is so great that there is a very large importation from the Pacific coast. The Philippine lumbermen are are not able to supply their demand. There are timbers not only of great value for cabinet-wood, but for construction purposes, including some of the best ship-building timbers in the world, and some of the finest cabinet-woods. There was one table made of valuable mahogany, which was about 18 feet long and 16 feet wide-one slab. There is ebony-wood, which corresponds with rosewood and other hardwoods peculiar to the islands, a very large proportion of which sink in the water when they are green,- -so much so that a regular method of lumbering is to drag these logs down at low tide, unhitch the caribou (water-buffalo) and let them lie until the lighter can come along and pick them up.

There is an enormous opportunity for lumbering in the islands as soon as the conditions of the country will permit it. At present, the lumbermen who are there are unable to get as much timber as the supply demands, because of the death of the water-buffalo-90 per cent. of the draft animals-and the unsettled condition of the islands; but when these conditions shall be pacified and the water-buffalo come back, when the Filipinos have learned to work, as they learn rapidly under the instructions of the Americans, there is going to be an enormous expansion of the lumber trade out there, and it is going to be coincident with the addition of wire-rope and machinery in the islands.

Another thing they have started out there. Instead of barring the methods of forestry, they are being used in all the cutting of timber that goes on in the Philippine forests, and are carrying it out under the regulations of the Bureau of Forestry there. Here we are going to have not merely one of the most productive pieces of forest region of the globe for our own markets, but for all the markets of the east, right at our doors, for the most valuable kinds of woods, all of it conserved by practical forestry. It is the finest opportunity for practical forestry that I have ever had anything to do with.

New Publications.

Pennsylvania Department of Forestry. Report for 1901 and 1902. 12mo., 158 pages. Illustrated, bound in cloth. Harrisburg, Pa.

Forestry Commissioner, J. T. Rothrock, calls attention to the fact that when Governor Stone was inaugurated in 1899 the State owned but 19,805 acres of forest preserve, while at the close of his term it is more than half a million acres. The text of the late laws establishing the Department of Forestry, the location by counties of the forest reserves acquired, and the forest fire problem are treated at length. The various forestry laws which were amended in 1901 are given in full. The use of the forest reserves for sanatoriums, outing-grounds and as a source of water-supply are treated of. Dr. Byron D. Halsted contributes an excellent paper on Fungi Injurious to Forests,' George H. Wirt, State Forester, on "The Mont Alto Estate Past, Present and Future," "Forest Valuation," and "Propagation of Forest Trees Having Commercial Value and Adapted to Pennsylvania." There is also a good paper on the "Manufacture of Chestnut Meal." Dr. Rothrock illustrates the use of the Black Willow as a pro-tector of River Banks. The report closes with tables showing that timber cut in 1901 was much less than in 1900, indicating the exhaustion of the timber resources.

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The forest fire losses in 1900 were $834,203, while in 1901 they amounted to $238,374.

It would be well for all of our members to apply to their members of the Legislature at Harrisburg for a copy of this report, as it contains much valuable information in regard to the present status of forestry in Pennsylvania.

Forest, Fish and Game Commission of New York, Eighth Annual Report, 1902. 164 pages, 8vo. Illustrated. Albany, N. Y.

According to this report, 28,505 acres were added to the Forest Preserve in 1902, making

the total acreage on January 1, 1903, 1,436,686 acres, most of which is in the Adirondack preserve. Special attention was paid to forest fires with gratifying results, as in 1902 only 21,356 acres were burned over, of which but 4345 acres were forest land, the balance having no merchantable timber on it. The total loss to standing timber was estimated at $9150. A tract of about 700 acres in Franklin County in the Adirondack preserve was planted in the Spring, with 500,000 seedlings; the entire cost of the seedlings, cartage and planting was $2496.22, less than one-half cent per plant. The seedlings have grown well, the percentage of loss being very small. The Commission has also established a nursery in Ulster County in the Catskill reserve, and selected a site for another at Saranac Inn Station in the Adirondack reserve. A list is also given of the prominent Adirondack Clubs, with the amount of Forester A. Knechtel land controlled by each. contributes a monograph on "Dead and Deceased Trees in Flushing and Port Jefferson, L. I.” Forester Clifford R. Pettit on "The Gathering of Spruce Seed." Forester Ernest A. Sterling on Chestnut Groves and Orchards." The book closes with the reports of the Chief Game Protector and State Superintendent of Shell-Fisheries.

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The Report of the Superintendent of Forestry for Canada (1902) has just been received. Note is made of the benefit derived from extensive posting of notices warning the public against the careless use of fire during the dry seasons. shows the zeal of the authorities that even the Peace and Mackenzie River regions had been reached with these warnings. The fire-rangers had also successfully protected five hundred miles of exposed railway belt in British Columbia against fire, while other parts of the province and adjacent States suffered. Experience has shown that an efficient [fire] patrol system is by all odds the most effective and least expensive.'

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It is especially worthy of the notice of this State that, at her experimental farms, Canada has 2,266,500 trees growing for, or ready for, distribution.

How long before we shall be able to make a similar showing? It is estimated that 6,000,000 trees will be required in Canada for the planting of 1905. "It has been shown by the way in which the settlers are taking advantage of the co-operative scheme that it is a very popular undertaking, which, aside from the fact of its great benefit to the country as a whole, if only systematically carried on over a sufficient length of time, should warrant an appropriation which would enable the work to be carried on in an efficient manner."