tection, will be more difficult and always more expensive. Financially, the condition may be stated as follows: The State has made an investment which is expected to yield a return indirectly for the welfare of the State and one directly that will equal the return from any other safe investment. At the present time the indirect returns are scarcely possible, or at least not to their maximum degree, because that is possible only when the land presents true forest conditions, and as long as forest land is allowed to be burned over on an average of once in twenty years forest conditions can never be brought about. On the other hand, the direct returns are very small-barely enough to pay expenses. A very good example showing the position of the State would be that of a man who has decided to go into the grocery business, and who buys a fine large building, but lays in a small stock, mostly undesirable to the people of his neighborhood. The result is he has a very small trade and does not make a profitable income on his investment. He decides, finally, to double his investment by purchasing a large and desirable stock of goods. Trade increases and profits are made rapidly. The result is that he makes a high rate of interest on a much larger investment. The reserves correspond to the store with a small and undesirable stock. Now, it is necessary for the State to increase its investment by increasing and bettering the stock of trees. Since it is possible to do this merely by protecting the land and existing growth from fires and other depredations, it is surely the most practical course to follow. This state of affairs cannot be used in argument against the policy of the State, but rather in favor of it. Forest land well stocked and well cared for is performing its economic rôle, whether in the hands of the State or of an individual, but it is preferable to have such forests under private control. At least, when such is the case, the State has no right to interfere with private rights or private enterprise, as long as it is in no way detrimental to the community. On the other hand, the large areas of land owned by private individuals that have been denuded of tree growth and that are uncared for are a menace to the community. From the nature of the case the private citizen neither wants to protect the land nor has the necessary money with which to do it. It falls to the lot, then, and is the duty of the State to purchase such tracts and care for them. The State can afford to wait a future return, even if it is a small one. Protective measures, being practically the same for State or individual, are of two kinds. They are either preventive or remedial. The latter are frequently met with in the well-regulated forests of European countries, but at present the preventive measures concern us most. The old adage, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," is doubly true in regard to the case of forests. The best authorities on forest protection unanimously declare that the first protective measure to be taken is to have a well-defined and permanent demarkation" of the forest boundaries. When this demarkation is done under the direction of a competent and trusted surveyor, usually the county surveyor, all disputes as to the ownership of the land are ended at once and for all time. This is very important in some localities, for as long as the people advance the slightest claim upon certain land, they have an excuse for trespass and for committing some depredation. While it is true that our reserves may still continue to change boundaries, yet it is very necessary that, just as rapidly as it can be accomplished, more permanent marks should be established on the boundaries than the old-fashioned "corners," which are loose piles of stone that can be easily moved, scattered or buried. Various means are possible for this purpose. In some sections a good road or trail could be made on the boundary. In other sections large stones or iron bars could be set up at intervals. After the limits of the reserves have been determined, the next step is to create an efficient force of forest wardens. These men must be trustworthy, sober, fearless and not political henchmen. As a rule, it is better to locate a stranger in each district, of from one thousand to five thousand acres, according to the locality. Their duty will be to learn every minutia of their districts, roads, streams, location of different aged growth and desirable trees, the people who frequent the districts, their needs and habits, etc., and to protect their forest areas from any injuries which come under their control. Their greatest work is in guarding against trespass and fire, the latter being the most important. Damage from fire alone should be reason enough for having a large force of good men on each | reserve, and especially during the two fire seasons. It is a great deal cheaper for the State to expend twenty-five cents an acre per year, than to lose five dollars an acre in one year, pay for extinguishing the fire and for reforestation. Or, in one instance, it would have been better to have expended two thousand dollars and saved ten thousand, rather than to expend two hundred and lose not only that but the ten thousand in addition, and then have the expense of reforestation. That is a business proposition, and if forestry is a business, We business propositions must be considered. must have wardens as the first preventive measure against fires. In addition, as a preventive measure against the forests' worst enemy, fire, there must be a complete network of good, clear roads and trails. These open places will decrease the area burned, will afford safe and effective lines from which to fight fires and by making the forest readily accessible in all its parts, together with a force of wardens, will not only lessen the area burned over, but even the number of fires. There are numerous reasons for having a system of roads, and if this is complete it is unnecessary to have what are called fire lanes. At any rate, the expense for clearing fire lanes about equals that of road. repairs, and at the same time the area devoted to that use is unproductive ground. If the principle, that each acre of ground should yield its maximum return, is tenable, then our fire lanes should not be fire lanes alone, but serviceable roads also. The only practical measures which we can take, at present, against damage done by insects is to favor insectivorous birds and the enemies of injurious insects. One of the best ways to do this is to prevent fires and allow the forests to regain a normal canopy. Using trap trees, or trees in which insects may gather and then be burned, is a practical method. Even camp-fires are serviceable in attracting moths, etc., and destroying them. Another means, serving as well against fungi, is to keep the forest clean of weak, deformed or dead trees. With few exceptions do insects or fungi attack healthy trees. Protection against atmospheric influences and various diseases, as far as is possible, must be looked after by foresters, as best they can. Sometimes a change of species or of management is advantageous. A very necessary part in forest protection is that afforded by laws. Our State has laws making it an offense, punishable by fine or imprisonment, to set fire to the woods, also giving a reward of fifty dollars to the prosecutor, if conviction is had. Constables have been made ex-officio fire wardens, and provision has been made to pay men for fighting fire. Detectives may be appointed to ferret out the cause of fires and to bring the guilty to punishment. Laws have been passed protecting insectivorous birds. The Commissioner of Forestry "is empowered to employ such detective service, and such legal or other service as may be necessary for the protection of the forestry reservations," provided such service is approved by the Forestry Commission and the Governor. All forest officers have been given constabulary powers, with power to arrest without a warrant. From a protective standpoint, scarcely anything more could be desired. The thing necessary to put all these laws into effective operation is to educate public opinion until the moral and financial sides of the question are apparent, then the expenses necessary for proper forestry management will be approved and even demanded. This may take time, but that such a condition will come is inevitable. GEORGE H. WIRT, State Forester. Railroads Take up Forestry. THE HE Bureau of Forestry has continued this year on a far larger scale the experiments in timber seasoning and preservation for the railroads, which it began last year under Dr. Hermann von Schrenk. This summer the work will be carried on in many States-East, South and West—and will be broadened in scope. This work will be done for the New York Central, the Erie, the Baltimore and Ohio and the Pennsylvania railroads in the East; and for the Illinois Central, the Santa Fe, the St. Louis and San Francisco, the Missouri, Kansas and Texas; the Northern Pacific, and the Burlington in the South and West. The scarcity of valuable timbers is felt by no class of consumers more keenly than by the railroads, which use every year 110,000,000 ties merely to renew those worn out and decayed. The price of timbers has risen in some instances to a figure which makes their use prohibitive; in other cases the supply is so nearly exhausted that the roads have been compelled to look about for new timbers. The practical and simple suggestion is that the railroads, instead of continuing to use expensive, high-grade timbers for railroad ties, shall use the cheaper woods. For example, to the complaint of the New York Central, that it finds it more and more difficult to secure longleaf-pine ties from Georgia at the price it can afford to pay, it is suggested that the road use the beech, maple and birch of the Adirondacks. The complaint that the timbers rot very quickly when laid in the ground is answered by the suggestion that they should be seasoned and preserved, just as beech is seasoned and preserved in France. The Great Eastern railroad of France has succeeded in making beech ties last thirty-five years by impregnating them with tar oils. The unseasoned longleaf-pine ties used by the New York Central last only five years; and the beech if laid green, without seasoning or preserving, would in many cases last no more than three years. The substance of the proposal made to the railroads, and which the railroads has thought so well of as to adopt, is that experiments be made to determine whether cheaper timbers may be treated with preservatives, at a cost so low and be made to last such a long time, that it will pay to substitute them for the more expensive timbers now employed. The railroads will not only carry on under the Forestry Bureau's direction the necessary experiments in seasoning and preserving, but have engaged its help in learning where cheap timbers for ties may be obtained. In other words, the railroads have decided that if they can be convinced that it will pay to season and preserve cheap timbers for ties, they will acquire large areas of timber lands on which they will grow their own trees, cut their own ties, and thus be assured of a steady supply. This means that some of the great railroads of the country are in a fair way to practice forestry on a very large scale, and to employ a great many foresters. St. Louis and San Francisco railroads seasoning experiments are in progress on swamp, red, pin, and cow oak, beech and gum. The experiments in seasoning the lodge-pole pine, carried on last year for the Burlington railroad in Bear Canyon, Montana, and Sheridan, Wyo., have been continued this year. Last year it was found that 39 per cent. of the weight of the ties was lost by open-air drying, which resulted in an enormous saving in freight. Work of a similar nature to the railroad experiments is being carried on for the American Telegraph and Telephone Company, which used last year 150,000 telephone poles and 3,000,000 feet of timber in cross-arms. Seasoning experiments are being conducted on chestnut telephone poles near Harrisburg, Pa., and on cedar poles near Wilmington, N. C. THE The present method of purchasing railroad ties cannot long continue. It is becoming more and more hazardous to rely on what may be obtained on the market, for the reason that the market is becoming more and more unwilling to let its timbers go as railroad ties, when as sawed lumber they would bring a higher price. Eastern roads often have to haul their ties as far as 700 miles. It is absolutely necessary that supplies be grown nearer home, and that there be a certainty of how much can be obtained. A railroad that needs half a million ties on short notice must have those ties at any price and is often compelled to pay far more than they are worth. The great advantage to the railroad of growing its own ties and prac-ing," ticing forestry would be that it would know to a certainty just how many ties it could count on every year and how much they would cost. Reafforesting Ireland. HE very important subject of reafforesting Ireland has been discussed in Dublin in an address which was an admirable "precis" of the history and difficulties of one of the numerous national questions. The author, Mr. C. Litton Falkiner, who is an authority equally on the past history and the modern economic problems of Ireland, furnished many proofs that the Irish climate and soil are naturally suited to the growth of timber of nearly every useful kind indigenous to Europe, and that the island was formerly stored with woods and forests of vast extent. During the wars of Elizabeth the system of "plashby which the forest paths were rendered impassable through the interlacing of the boughs of the great trees with the abundant underwood, was, of the obstacles encountered by the Queen's soldiers, the most dangerous with which they were confronted. The destruction of the woods, due in the first place to this deliberate policy of the Tudor sovereigns and in the next to the accident of war, was accelerated both during the long peace that preceded the rebellion, and afterwards in the years following the Restoration by the progress of the arts of peace. The diminution of the woodland area during the 17th century was extremely rapid, with the result that the Irish statute-book from the Restoration to the middle of the 18th century is found to be crowded with measures which had for their object the encouragement of planting and the replacing of timber in districts from which it had disappeared. Dealing with the existing situation, Mr. Falkiner' said that the result of recent experiments in forAlong the lines of the Illinois Central and the estry on a large scale had not been such as to An expert of the Bureau is now cruising in the Adirondacks to determine how much available hardwood lands there are along the New York Central's tracks. Similar work will be done for the Erie and the Pennsylvania. A party of foresters is on the 60,000-acre tract of the Baltimore and Ohio road near Camden-on-Gauley, W. Va., to determine how much tie timber there is on the tract and how many trees it will produce every year under conservative management. Seasoning experiments with railroad ties are being conducted in co-operation with the Santa Fe railroad and the Kirby Lumber Company at Silsbee, Tex., and the ties are being treated with preservatives at Somerville, Tex. The timbers undergoing the experiments are longleaf, loblolly and shortleaf pines. encourage further attempts, yet, either through the agency of the Department of Agriculture or by whatever machinery may be set up for the purpose of the new land act, means must surely be found, not alone to set bounds to the continued destruction of the woods of Ireland, but to encourage the plantation of that large part of the country's immense waste-lands which are suited to the growing of timber. When it was remembered that the United Kingdom imported annually close to $20,000,000 worth of timber, of which above 80 per cent. was coniferous and capable of being produced in large quantities at home, it would be seen at once how large would be the field of opportunity could the timber supplies of Ireland be revived on any considerable scale.-Timber, of London, Eng. New Publications. Seasoning of Timber. Bulletin No. 41, Bureau of Forestry, Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 8vo., 48 pages, illustrated. This report was prepared by Dr. Hermann von Schrenk, in charge of Mississippi Valley Laboratory, Bureau of Plant Industry, and Reynolds Hill, agent of the Bureau of Forestry. It treats of the preliminary seasoning of wood which precedes the actual chemical treatment. The wood is usually seasoned in kilns, or in the air; but in late years, owing to the demand for lumber, this has not been thoroughly done, and, in consequence, it decays more rapidly, besides warping, checking and shrinking. Dr. Von Schrenk has chapters on the distribution of water in timber, and the relation which this bears to wood-decay. The seasoning of wood implies other changes than simple drying, which are discussed, together with the preservative treatment, the advantages of seasoning, how the timber is seasoned, plan for seasoning tests, with results of such tests with lodgepole pine ties, etc., are all treated. In summing up, it is recommended (1) that green timber should be piled in as open piles as possible as soon as it is cut, and so kept until it is air-dry. In the case of ties, the 7 x 2 form of pile is the best. No timber should be treated until it is air-dry. (2) Timber treated with a preservative dissolved in water should be piled after treatment for several months at least, to allow the water pressed into the wood with the salt to evaporate. Under no circumstances should timber freshly treated with a water solution be exposed to weathering influences. The monograph is illustrated by 18 pages of plates and 16 text-figures. The Woodlot. A Handbook for Owners of Woodlands in Southern New England. Bulletin No. 42, Bureau of Forestry, Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 8vo., 89 pages, illustrated. This monograph was prepared by Prof. Henry S. Graves, Director of the Yale Forest School, and Mr. Richard T. Fisher, field assistant in the Bureau of Forestry, for the purpose of showing how second-growth woods should be treated to yield larger returns in the long run than are possible under the present methods, giving practical information obtained from extensive experience in handling timber of this class. Most of the trees in this section are hardwoods, chiefly oak, chestnut, maple, hickory and ash, being second-growth under sixty years of age. Directions are given as to improvement cuttings; also of the different methods of selection, sprout, successive thinnings and seedling reproduction after clear cutting. The best way to mark trees which should be removed by cutting, of planting and pruning trees, as well as protecting them from fire, insects and wind, are all set forth. The monograph closes with a chapter on the practicability of forestry, and thirty examples of the actual application of methods of cutting recommended in second-growth woods. There are 4 pages of plates, in addition to 30 text-figures, which aid in securing a full understanding of the subject. Report of the Bureau of Forestry of the Philippine Islands, from July. 1, 1901, to September 1, 1902. 8vo., 78 pages, illustrated. Capt. George P. Ahern, Chief of the Forestry Bureau, has made a most interesting report on forestry in the Philippine Islands. The area of the forests of the islands are given as 48,112,920 acres, and tree species number 600 to 700; nearly all of this timber land is owned by the Government, less than 1,000,000 acres being private woodland. Lumbering in the islands has thus far been conducted in a very primitive manner. There is also a report on the forest conditions on the southwest coast of Camarines, giving the stand of trees, the rock, soil, humus, underbrush, reproduction, density, merchantable condition, lumbering, and forest management. Mr. Ralph C. Bryant, forester, contributes a "Preliminary Report on Working-Plan of Bataan Province." the southern portion of this province is a military reservation of 65,400 acres, and a detailed examination was made of this forest. In the Binuangan river basin, the stand per acre of the seven principal trees, over 20 inches in diameter, is given as 5121 cubic feet per acre, in the Auro river basin 4260 cubic feet, the stand varying in other In localities; there are short descriptions of the principal varieties of trees from a lumbering standpoint, etc. P. L. Sherman, Inspector of the Forestry Bureau, makes a special report on the timber of the Sulu Archipelago and Southern Mindanao. These forests are practially unexplored, and are made up of several hundred species. Dr. Sherman also contributes "Investigations of Gutta-Percha and Rubber in the Southern Philippines," showing that a considerable amount of these products were obtained; from July, 1901, up to February, 1902, the shipments from all of the southern ports amounting to 297,000 pounds, which does not represent the entire production. The total expenses of the Philippine Forestry Bureau in 1901-02 was $155,269.78, and the revenues $348,073.08. The total cut of timber for the year ending June 30, 1902, was 4,957,972 cubic feet, of which but 196,987 cubic feet came from private lands; in addition,¦ 3,808,870 cubic feet of firewood, 247,947 cubic feet of charcoal, 20,685 pounds of rattan, 2,256,458 pounds of dyewood, 312,154 pounds of tan bark, 1,082,235 pounds of gum mastic, 282,996 pounds of rubber, 373,331 pounds of gutta-percha, 9,181 gallons of vegetable oil, 113,905 pounds of pitch, and 20,685 pounds of cinnamon were ob tained. The 37 full-page illustrations aid in an understanding and add to the value of the report. Tree Planting on Streets and Highways. By William F. Fox, New York Forest, Fish and Game Commission, Albany, N. Y. Quarto, 50 pages, illustrated. The Superintendent of State Forests, Col. William F. Fox, has taken up in a most thorough manner the subject of tree planting in the New England and Middle States. Highway trees are first treated of, the American elm and the hard maple being considered as ranking first, it being recommended that there be plenty of space between the trees and overcrowding avoided, allowing, say, 70 feet for elms and 50 feet for hard maples. Street trees proper are then taken up, and a table given of trees, their relative rank representing desirability. For wide streets the American, or white elm, is recommended, followed by the hard or sugar maple, while for narrow streets the Norway maple is given the preference, followed by white or silver maple. A short description of each tree (22 in all) is given, the advantages and disadvantages being stated. Some undesirable trees are also mentioned. Other chapters treat of destructive insects, rapidity of growth, transplanting, pruning, arrangement of trees on streets, protection of trees from animals and insects, municipal control of trees, legislation enacted by various States in regard to tree planting on streets and highways. Autumn foliage is brought prominently forward, and beautifully illustrated by colored plates, the whole closing with a list of the trees mentioned, with both their common and scientific names. Anyone contemplating planting street or highway trees would do well to secure a copy of this monograph and study it. 1902. ton, D. C. Year-Book of the Department of Agriculture, 8vo., 912 pages, illustrated. WashingThe Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, has issued his report for the year 1902, containing many valuable articles, but our readers will be particularly interested in those pertaining to forestry. "The Climate of the Forest-Denuded Portion of the Upper Lake Region" is written by Willis L. Moore; William M. Hall contributes the "Practicability of Forest Planting in the United States;" A. D. Hopkins presents "Some of the Principal Insect Enemies of Coniferous Forests in the United States;" Overton W. Price treats of "The Influence of Forestry upon the Lumber Industry;" while William H. Krug gives the results of "Chemical Studies of Some Forest Products of Economic Importance;" and F. E. Olmsted has an article on "Tests on the Physical Properties of Timber." According to a table in the appendix there are now three national forestry associations and State organizations in eighteen States and one Territory, which certainly shows a growing interest in the subject of forestry. List of National, State and Local Commercial Organizations, and National, State and Local Agricultural Associations. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. 12m0., 296 pages. This list was compiled by the Interstate Commerce Commission, at the request of the Senate, and forms a handy reference-book of these organizations, giving the location, title of the association, with the names of the president and secretary, with addresses. At one of the late meetings of the New York Railroad Club the topic selected for the evening was The Use of Timber by Railroads." The first paper presented was on "The Use of Timber by Railroads, and its Relation to Forestry," by Dr. Hermann von Schrenk, of the Department of Agriculture, and the second paper was entitled "Railroad Interests in Forest Supplies," by Dr. B. E. Fernow, being followed by an interesting discussion. |