ments, avoiding the natural streams and lakes wherever possible so as to be above danger of flood. The new system, on the other hand, makes use of all these rivers and lakes, whenever practical; it makes them into a canal ("canalizes them ") by the building of dams, locks, and other engineering works and obtains what is known as "slack water navigation." In fact, less than thirty per cent. of the Barge canal is built in "land line."

There will be 446 miles of Barge canals, the Erie being 339 miles

long, the Champlain 61, the Oswego 23, and the Cayuga-Seneca 23 miles long. Of this total, approximately 400 miles are completed and the most of it will be in operation westward to Oswego during the present year, while the remainder is rapidly being finished.

The dimensions of the Barge canal vary according to the locality, but in all places it will be at least 12 feet deep. It is 125 feet wide in earth sections of the land line, 94 feet wide in rock cuts, and has a width of at least 200 feet in the beds of rivers and lakes through which it runs.

The Champlain canal will be complete in 1917 and will be in operation during the summer. The Oswego is finished, and the Erie canal will be finished next year to the point where it meets the Oswego, thereby making it possible to carry goods by Barge canal between Lake Ontario and the Hudson river. The Cayuga-Seneca will be finished this summer and in 1918 the entire canal will probably be completed and in operation, and will be able to float a barge of three thousand tons capacity.

The Barge canal locks are 328 feet long and 45 feet wide. They will lift at one time from one water level to another six such boats as are at present in use on the canals. The most wonderful of these locks are the five at Waterford, near Troy, which have a combined lift of 169 feet, the greatest series of high lift locks in the world. These locks cost about one-quarter of a million dollars each. The lock at Little Falls has a lift of 402 feet; this is remarkable because it has a greater lift than any lock on the Panama canal. The siphon lock at Oswego has a lift of 25 feet, is the first lock of this type to be built in the United States and the largest of its type in the world.

In the construction of the Barge canal a greater variety of machinery has been used than ever before used on any engineering undertaking; this machinery represents a cost of about $10,000,000.

This great inland canal will cost $150,000,000 and is being paid for by the people of New York State without any aid from the United States government.

There will be no towpaths on the new canal, so that the big barges which will be used must be run by mechanical means. The State is also building Barge canal terminals at all the cities and important towns along the different channels. These will be provided with machinery to

load and unload barges. It is quite certain that the Barge canal will serve to attract once more the inland shipping that once passed through the old canals and did much toward making New York the Empire State, and New York city the greatest metropolis in the American Union. DeWitt Clinton's dream will have become a reality.

At The Universities

Dr. Hugh P. Baker, Dean of the College of Forestry at Syracuse has been granted a year's leave of absence for travel and study. He is leaving the college the first week in April and will spend the first few months in northern Wisconsin and in the Rockies and the Cascades. Sometime in August, if the international situation allows, he plans to go on to China and India, spending some six or seven months in studying forest conditions and forestry work. Franklin F. Moon, Professor of Forest Engineering will be acting dean in the absence of Dr. Baker.

Mr. A. B. Recknagel, Professor of Forest Management at Cornell has been granted a leave of absence from his duties at the University. The Second Edition of Professor Recknagel's book "Forest Working Plans" has just been published by John Wiley & Sons.

The State College of Forestry at Syracuse announces the appointment of Mr. Ernest G. Dudley of Leland Stanford University and the Yale Forest School as Assistant Professor of Forest Extension. Mr. Dudley comes to the college from the U. S. Forest Service in California where he has recently been in charge of the Forest Service Exhibit at the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego. "New York Forestry" welcomes Mr. Dudley to the State and wishes him well in his new work.

Mr. F. A. Millen, a member of this year's graduating class of the Forestry Department at Cornell, has been appointed assistant state forester in East Texas.

Mr. I. E. Vail, class of 1917, represented the Forestry Club of the State College of Forestry at Syracuse at the recent conference of Forestry Clubs held this year in Seattle. Mr. Vail returned from Seattle through California by way of Albuquerque, visiting some of the National Forests.

Lectures by the members of the faculty of the Cornell Forestry Department proved to be not the least of the many enjoyable features of Farmers' Week at Ithaca, observed during February. These lectures were well attended by visitors from all parts of the State.

Not exactly lazy—
Yet I want to sit
In the mornin' hazy

SPRING FEVER

By Douglas Malloch, in
"The Woods"

An' jest dream a bit. Haven't got ambition

Fer a single thing

Regaler condition

Ev'ry bloomin' Spring.

Want to sleep at noontime
(Ought to work instead),
But along at moontime
Hate to go to bed.
Find myself a-stealin'
Fer a sunny spot-
Jest that Springy feelin',
That is what I've got.

Like to set a-wishin'
Fer a pipe an' book,
Like to go a-fishin'

In a meadow-brook

With some fish deceiver,
Underneath a tree-
Jest the old Spring fever,
That's what's ailing me!

To the members of the New York State Forestry Association:

The Massachusetts Forestry Association wishes to extend you a cordial invitation to join with us in a tour of the National Forests and National Parks next summer. A special bulletin on this tour has been prepared and will be forwarded to any of you who are interested in knowing about it. If you will simply send us your name and address on a post-card with the request for the bulletin, we will send it to you

at once.

The purpose of this tour is two-fold. First, to acquaint the people of the eastern part of the country with the vast public domains in the National Forests and National Parks of which they are part owners. Second, a splendid vacation in the open.

Sincerely yours,

Massachusetts Forestry Association, 4 Joy Street, Boston, Mass.

Harris A. Reynolds, Secretary.

A

FORESTS AND WATER IN NEW YORK

By Hugh P. Baker, Dean

The New York State College of Forestry

New York Originally a Vast Forest. CCORDING to the area and topography of its land surface the New York of today was at the time of the first settlement at New Amsterdam as rich in its forests and waters as any other similar section east of the Mississippi River. Reports of the French explorers and of the early Moravian Missionaries, as well as the travels of President Dwight of Yale College and the travels of the English scientist Lyell in this country all show that before the white man entered the State its land area was covered with one continuous forest. There may have been openings here and there where the Indian cultivated a bit of ground, but as those areas were abandoned they came again to forest so that New York offered to the first white settlers a wonderful wealth of forest and water cover.

Active use of its forests, waters and soils for nearly 300 years has brought vast riches to the State, but as there has been the same careless use of these natural resources as is evident everywhere through the country, we are now squarely up against the unquestionable fact that the natural resources of the State were never more valuable and never more important than they are today. Millions in money have been spent in developing the use of these resources; many more millions will be spent during the next few years in husbanding and renewing them. We are not condemning as freely as previously the way in which our forests and waters have been used during the past 50 years. Certainly the lumberman was careless in the way in which he removed the forest cover but often with equal carelessness the farmer has taken the virgin fertility from our soils; the miner has taken the best of the minerals, leaving vast quantities in the ground because not easily accessible. The way in which these natural resources were used was characteristic of the rapid development of our youthful states and youthful nation. Past use of the forest is history and we shall pay dearly for some of that history. Our problem

From an address by Dean Baker before the New York State Waterways Association.