finds its hour of peril when there is no longer free access to the land, or when the land will no longer support the people.

BY JAMES S. WHIPPLE,

State Forest, Fish and Game Commissioner of New York.

The most imperative thing that we have to do in America to-day is to saye the forests of the country.

A FEW STATISTICS

BY TREADWELL CLEVELAND, JR.

From A Primer of Conservation, 1908

WE ARE now cutting timber from the forests of the United States at the rate of 500 feet B. M. a year for every man, woman, and child. In Europe they use only 60 board feet. At this rate, in less than thirty years all our remaining virgin timber will be cut. Meantime, the forests which have been cut over are generally in a bad way for want of care; they will produce only inferior second growth. We are clearly over the verge of a timber famine.

This is not due to necessity, for the forests are one of the renewable resources. Rightly used, they go on producing crop after crop indefinitely. The countries of Europe know this, and Japan knows it;

and their forests are becoming with time not less, but more, productive. We probably still possess sufficient forest land to grow wood enough at home to supply our own needs. If we are not blind, or wilfully wasteful, we may yet preserve our forest independence and, with it, the fourth of our great industries.

Present wastes in lumber production are enormous. Take the case of yellow pine, which now heads the list in the volume of annual cut. In 1907 it is estimated that only one-half of all the yellow pine cut during the season was used, and that the other half, amounting to 8,000,000 cords, was wasted. Such waste is typical. Mr. R. A. Long, in his address on "Forest Conservation" at the Conference on the Conservation of Natural Resources, pointed out that 20 per cent. of the yellow pine was simply left in the woods a waste which represents the

timber growing on 300,000 acres.

The rest of the waste takes place at the mill. Of course, it would never do to speak of the material rejected at the mill as waste unless this material could be turned to use by some better and more thorough form of utilization. But in many cases we know, and in many other cases we have excellent reason to believe, that most, if not all, of this material could be used with profit. It is simply a question of intelligent investigation and, more than all, of having the will to economize.

But there are other ways to conserve the forests besides cutting in half the present waste of forest products. The forests can be made to produce three or four times as rapidly as they do at present. This is true of both the virgin forests and the cut-over lands. Virgin forests are often fully stocked with first-class timber, but this stock has been laid in very slowly, on account of the wasteful competition which is carried on constantly between the rival trees. Then, too, in the virgin forest there are very many trees which have reached maturity and stopped growing, and these occupy space which, if held by younger trees, would be laying in a new stock constantly. As regards the cut-over land, severe cutting, followed by fire, has checked growth so seriously that in most cases reproduction is both poor and slow, while in many other cases there is no true forest reproduction at all at present, and there is but little hope for the future.

In addressing the Conference of Governors, the Hon. William Jennings Bryan said:

"No subject has been brought out more prominently at this Conference than the subject of forestry, and it justifies the time devoted to it, for our timberlands touch our national interests at several points. Our use of lumber is enormous, but immense as would be the inconvenience and loss caused by the absence of lumber, the consequence of the destruction of our forests would be still more disastrous to

the nation. As has been shown, the timber on our mountain ranges protects our water supply. Not to speak of changes in climate which might follow the denuding of our mountains, the loss to the irrigated country could not be remedied and the damage to the streams could not be calculated."

RELATIONS OF TREES TO WATER

BY WILSON FLAGG

From A Year Among the Trees

THERE is a spot which I used to visit some years ago, that seemed to me one of the most enchanting of natural scenes. It was a level plain of about ten acres, surrounded by a narrow stream that was fed by a steep ridge forming a sort of amphitheatre round more than half its circumference. The ridge was a declivity of near a hundred feet in height, and so steep that you could climb it only by taking hold of the trees and bushes that covered it. The whole surface consisted of a thin stratum of soil deposited upon a slaty rock; but the growth of trees upon this slope was beautiful and immense, and the water that was constantly trickling from a thousand fountains kept the ground all the year green with mosses and ferns, and gay with many varieties of flowers. The soil was so rich in the meadow enclosed by this ridge, and annually fertilized by the débris washed from the

hills, that the proprietor every summer filled his barns with hay, which was obtained from it without any cultivation.

I revisited this spot a few years since, after a long period of absence. A new owner, “a man of progress and enterprise," had felled the trees that grew so beautifully on the steep sides of this elevation, and valley and hill have become a dreary and unprofitable waste. The thin soil that sustained the forest, no longer protected by the trees and their undergrowth, has been washed down into the valley, leaving nothing but a bald, rocky surface, whose hideousness is scarcely relieved by a few straggling vines. The valley is also ruined; for the inundations to which it is subject after any copious rain destroy every crop that is planted upon it, and render it impracticable for tillage. It is covered with sand heaps; the little stream that glided round it, fringed with azaleas and wild roses, has disappeared, and the land is reduced to a barren pasture.

The general practice of the pioneers of civilization on this continent was to cut down the wood chiefly from the uplands and the lower slopes of the hills and mountains. They cleared those tracts which were most valuable for immediate use and cultivation. Necessity led them to pursue the very course required by the laws of nature for improving the soil and climate. The first clearings were made chiefly for purposes of agriculture; and as every farm was