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land should be the function of local governments, counties, cities and towns.

Practically the latter plan has very many advantages, especially because it means local pride and endeavor in maintaining local forest

resources.

Such a movement for local acquirement of land, if properly developed, could, under State control and with adequate reforestation solve the problem of the maintenance of timber supply in New York.

New York legislation has already paved the way for such a development in forestry by the law permitting counties, town and villages to acquire lands for forestry purposes. It is doubtful if this measure alone will suffice to attain the objects desired. Further than this two plans are suggested as follows: (1) A loan by the State with interest at 3 per cent. for a 50-year period to the local government (county, city, town or village) for use under State regulation in acquiring land and planting it; loan to be secured by a

(2)

lien on the first crop of timber. Let the State purchase at cost lands owned or acquired for reforestation. purposes by counties, cities, towns or villages; the State to reforest such lands and manage them. Within ten years, however, the local government originally giving deed of such lands to the State may redeem them by paying the State the original cost at 3 per cent. interest plus reforestation charges.

In conclusion: Any program of general reforestation must be based on investigation and land classification. Reforestation of State lands now denuded is of first importance; assistance of private plantings (corporate and individual) by the State is next and the formation of a plan for the establishment and management of community forests and its execution is next.

A solution of the problem involves effort by all classes of owners and reforestation must be put on an extensive plan soon.

Metal and concrete ties have been proven to be unsatisfactory and in Germany they are going back to wooden ties in spite of the gradually increasing cost.

The other trees used in order

New York uses more white pine than any other wood. of importance are spruce, white oak, southern pine, hard maple, hemlock, chestnut, etcs Large quantities of red wood and Douglass fir from the Pacific Coast as well as yellow pine from the South are imported into this state when our own native woods are better for general purposes and could be just as well grown here.

The Conservation Commission has issued under date of January 1, 1914, a revised "List of Lands in the Forest Preserve." The former list published in 1909 places the area of the Forest Preserve at 1,634,261 acres. The present publication states this area to be 1,825,883 acres, of which 201,827 acres are lands under water. The previous list included lands under water but no effort was made to classify them separately. This publication gives a list of the 6,850 parcels owned by the State. The edition is limited and is not available for general distribution nor is it of interest to the general public.

The season of 1913 was one of extreme drought in the forest sections of this state. Six hundred eighty-eight forest fires were reported in the forest sections of the Adirondack and Catskill Mountain regions. This territory was protected through a force consisting of 5 district rangers, 69 local rangers and 49 lookouts on mountain stations. Each ranger was assigned a territory approximating 100,000 acres. Although the drought made the fire danger great but 7/10 of 1 per cent of the area under protection was burned. The entire cost of protection, including the expense of extinguishing fires, was less than 14 mills per acre which is, on the average approximately 2 mills per dollar of valuation. The effectiveness of the present system has been fully demonstrated. It can be made more effective by the increased number of Mountain Stations and rangers.

THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN

Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.

Nothing harms beneath the leaves
More than waves a swimmer cleaves.
Toss your heart up with the lark,
Foot at peace with mouse and worm,
Fair you fare.

Only at a dread of dark

Quaver, and they quit their form:
Thousand eyeballs under hoods

Have you by the hair.

Enter these enchanted woods,

You who dare.

George Meredith.

[graphic][merged small]

Mountain look-out stations and well organized patrol in the Adirondacks and Catskills reduced the fire damage in 1913 to $75,000 against $1,000,000 each in the other dry years like 1903 and 1908. Should not a State-wide fire law be passed?

G'

By HON. CHAS. M. Dow

ENTLEMEN.- I am to have the privilege of talking to you. about forest arboreta. But with your permission, I shall extend. that privilege somewhat, and talk a little about forests and forestry as well.

A practical man would satisfy himself as to the reasons for doing a thing before he considered the method for doing it. Before we take up the question of the method of establishing a forest arboretum, let us first whether such an object lesson in forest planting is necessary or desirable.

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A lecturer in the science of medicine would not be likely to impress or properly instruct his students, did he talk glowingly about the hospitals, but omit all reference to the patients themselves. And I think we would all be disappointed, if we attended a lecture on scientific farming and listened to a lengthy dissertation on hoes and plows and rakes and fertilizers — and heard not a single word about seeds and crop yields and how to harvest them.

It is the same with forestry. Before a man talks about an arboretum or about silviculture or forest management, or forest utilization, or before he advises others to practice them, he wants to be wholly sure in his own mind that all these things are wise and necessary and wholly practicable. I want to make this point very clear the need for being sure about the justification and the need for doing a thing before we talk about the method of doing it.

I am not a professional forester in the technical sense, but a business man who has dealt in private and some public affairs, an American citizen, and therefore deeply interested in the forest and its welfare; I did not become enthusiastic over forest arboreta in general and over one forest arboretum in particular until I came to realize that

such object lessons were greatly needed to help get this whole great principle of practical forestry into effect.

First, however, I had to convince myself that practical forestry was needed in America. I looked about me and I traveled. I traveled somewhat widely. And the more I looked the more I saw apart from all matters of statistics, that wherever trees are, men follow. And I saw that these men, this army of loggers, which contains no fewer numbers than the army of the United States, is busy everywhere. For the loggers are busy in the resinous, snow-laden north woods and in the forests of the Lake States. They are busy in the Rocky mountains from Montana to Arizona, among the lodgepole and the western yellow pine. They are busy among the great rock fir and cedar and sugar pine of the Pacific forests. And the size of this army of loggers grows steadily with the years. It is a varied army, is this army of loggers, facing many different conditions in this great country of ours. French-Canadians, Americans, Irishmen, Scotchmen, Negroes, Indians, mountaineers and plainsmen, go to make it up; and the army is fighting forests quite effectively. And you will readily realize, gentlemen, that the lumber cut in one year in the United States would make a row of wooden houses more than 10,000 miles long, or about the same distance as the mail route from New York to Hong Kong.

But, while lumbering is interesting and even picturesque to watch, while it is varied in its methods, ranging from steam skidders to the aerial tramways, to the logging railroads, and to river driving, and while each method has its elements of interest, still, the thing which counts most is not just how the loggers do their work, but what results they leave behind.

I hold no brief against the lumbermen, they have been pioneers in industry. They have added greatly by their initiative, their abilities, and their remarkably skillful methods in turning forests into lumber and lumber into money, in the material development of the United States. But in the woods But in the woods work they have done, their last thought as a rule has been the safety and perpetuation of the forest. Their first thought has generally been to take the cream, and to leave the skimmed milk behind.

What has been the result? The result has been to devastate some one hundred million acres of forest land in America. This land has been stripped so clean by careless use of the axe and the saw and the following fires, that trees must be planted by hand upon this vast area to bring back a commercial forest upon it, and thus to restore it to productive use.

We do not need to go far from home to see this waste. We have it at our doors, right in the Adirondacks. Some one has made the forceful statement that forestry is practiced in the Adirondacks everywhere except right in the woods. I realize that here and there Adirondack forest owners have turned their thoughts to thrift. But on the whole the Adirondack forests are not being perpetuated or improved by careful utilization but are being destroyed by reckless use.

Where is the remedy for this wastefulness? For this obliviousness to the future? For this feverish appetite for wood, about twenty times as great per capita as that of the great nations of Europe? Where lies the remedy for this? What shall I say for this somewhat perverted, artificially stimulated appetite? What are the methods under which our forests may be made not only storehouses but factories of wood? Three great forces must work together to save our forests the nation, the States and individual citizens. No one force can in time accomplish adequate results in forest conservation.

In regard to tree planting, the United States naturally falls into three regions

-the Eastern, the Central and the Western. The Eastern region is that one which lies east of the Great Prairie States. In it is a vast aggregate of denuded lands suitable only for forest growth on which as the result of repeated fires following logging, natural reproduction has not and probably will not take place. Cut-over and burnedover lands in urgent need of forest planting in the Atlantic region, and in the northern portion of the northern. States, alone aggregate over three and one-half million acres.

Then there is the great area of abandoned farm lands, mainly in New England and in the southern mountains; and then again there are the woodlots rendered unproductive by misuse, on which planting is essential to bring back the forest crop.

The Central region comprises the prairie country. Tree planting is urgently needed there to protect crops from wind, to grow timber for ordinary farm purposes in a mainly treeless. country. In the far west the planting problem is mainly federal and on it a good beginning has been made.

To sum up, gentlemen, without going too deeply into the dry realms of figures and statistics, we have planted in the United States just about one acre in every ten thousand acres which it is our duty to ourselves and those who follow us to plant forest trees.

There is the task. Now, what is needed for its accomplishment? As I see it, these are the main things: A much more wide and more definite knowledge on the part of the landholding citizens of the returns and profits who follow us to plant forest trees. There is much need for that. Mention tree planting to the average man. What is his response? "Plant trees," he says, "Why, I can't wait that long for my returns. Tree planting is all very well for States and Governments, but I am merely a man with a little span of life ahead of me. When I invest I must at least live long enough to harvest the crop."

You see, gentlemen, that such men are apt to think not in terms of white

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