120 NOTES AND COMMENT 



kingdom do home bodies like the oyster, anchored to one spot for life, 

 find need of such aids. Nature bestows no luxuries, no organs that 

 cannot be serviceably employed." The statement in the last sentence 

 of this quotation is not only untrue, but it has been known to be untrue 

 for over forty years. 



We have a right to expect better things than these from the non-scien- 

 tific press. We cannot carp at the daily papers for extracting humor 

 from every available source of that valuable commodity, but they must 

 not do so at the risk of discrediting a new and important scientific activ- 

 ity. We cannot expect The Nation to notice only the heavily technical 

 outputtings of science, but we can and do expect it to give as much care 

 to its science as it does to its drama, music and art. Neither do we exact 

 technicality of the popular monthlies, but we do exact accuracy of them, 

 both in facts and principles, even if it compels them to do what scien- 

 tific journals so frequently do in submitting proffered manuscripts to 

 competent judges outside the editorial office before accepting them. 



The Fifth Annual Convention of Pennsylvania Foresters was in ses- 

 sion at Harrisburg during the first week of March, numbering among 

 its speakers Prof. Filibert Roth of the University of Michigan and Mr. 

 F. A. Gaylord of the New York Conservation Commission. The con- 

 vention again serves to bring the Pennsylvania forest service to public 

 notice, and to remind us that it is the oldest and in many respects the 

 best organized of the state forest departments. As long ago as 1893 a 

 forestry commission was appointed in Pennsylvania, with Dr. J. T. 

 Rothrock as chief. The work of the commission was organized as a 

 division of the state department of agriculture in 1895, and in 1901 was 

 constituted a department of forestry, with Mr. Robert S. Conklin as 

 commissioner. An area of 972,000 acres has been set aside in state 

 forest reservations, lying chiefly in the central and north central part of 

 the state. They comprise some valuable stands of hemlock and hard- 

 woods, but are mostly cut-over mountain lands, presenting to the for- 

 ester a radically different set of problems from those involved in the man- 

 agement of the large western national forests. Over twenty men have 

 been trained in the state forest academy and placed in charge of the 

 scattered reserves. Three nurseries are maintained, and much has been 

 done toward mapping and studying the reservations and providing them 

 with roads, telephone lines and fire breaks. 



