EDITORIAL 297 



It must always be remembered that the Government has a great public 

 service work to do with the national forests. It is not simply a question of 

 maintaining great timber producing forests, it is a question of maintaining 

 stream flow, of irrigation, of climatic conditions, of health and prosperity for 

 the people which in many cases demand national expenditure without corre- 

 sponding returns. This work is a great task of applied science and is neces- 

 sarily placed in the hands of experts. To allow it to be demoralized for politi- 

 cal purposes or private profit, which the Heyburn amendment or the Lafferty 

 resolution would accomplish would be a crime against humanity. 



THE PASSING OF THE PIONEERS 



SOUNG as the forestry movement in America is, it is already old enough 

 to begin to note the passing away of some of its veterans. While most 

 of its active professional workers are young men with years of usefulness 

 ahead of them, there are others to whom it owes a great debt— men who while 

 not professionally concerned with forestry have had the foresight and the 

 understanding to realize, in advance of general public intelligence, the signifi- 

 cance of forestry, the relation of trees to man and to civilization; and who 

 gave to that thought years ago their interest and their unselfish effort. To 

 them as pioneers and advocates is due the advanced state of the movement 

 today, and their names should be writ large in its history and remembered 

 always for a great public service. 



A few months ago William Henry Brewer, for thirty years Norton 

 professor of agriculture in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, 

 joined the great majority, full of years and honors. Professor Brewer was 

 one of a type of scientific men none too common, whose range of vision went 

 far beyond any specialty. The late Professor Shaler of Harvard was another 

 of the"^ same type. These men looked deeply into many things. Their minds 

 were in the highest degree constructive. Their thought saw the relation of 

 different fields of science and coordinated them. Both of them knew their 

 country as few men have known it. They traveled over it, searched its hidden 

 recesses, studied its resources, and appraised their value and their interde- 

 pendence with keen insight. Professor Marsh, also a Yale man, was another 

 of this broad-minded type of scientific thinkers and his contribution to forestry 

 is well known and still classic. Professor Brewer was not a writer so much 

 as a teacher and inspirer of others, and so his work for forestry is less known 

 to the public except to those who came in contact with him and derived 

 suggestion and inspiration from that contact. In this way his influence was 

 great, and he must be reckoned as one of the chief promoters of the great 

 movement which is becoming a distinct part of our economic life and finding 

 its place in applied science as well as in the sentiment of the people. He was 

 one of the committee appointed by the government from the National Academy 

 of Sciences to investigate the condition of the forests of the country and to 

 formulate a plan for their maintenance and increase. The work and recom- 

 mendations of this commission were largely responsible for the foi-mation of 

 the present United States Forest Service. He was a member of the governing 

 board of the Yale Forest School and for several years was a lecturer of the 

 school on forest physiography. 



Since the April number of American Foeestey went to press, another 

 veteran worker whose service was intimately connected with the beginnings of 

 the American Forestry Association, has left us. Judge Warren Higley, who 

 died in New York on the 24th of March, after an active and honorable educa- 



