170 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



winter work and studies come around. The larger maga- 

 zines may be pressed into service for this purpose, while 

 the chief thing to be attended to is to see well to it that 

 your stack is kept in a dry place with a proper weight 

 on it, and where no one will handle it but yourself. When 

 the season's botanizing is over with, you can enter upon 

 the most inspiring and delightful task of starting your 

 permanent herbarium. Special papers come for this, and 

 they are of two kinds : one for the leaves (white or cream), 

 and one for the covers (tan or brown). They are both 

 after the order of parchment paper — heavy, durable, un- 

 tearable, and of hea\'y weight. They should be of folio size ; 

 each page devoted to a specimen, unless it be too small, when 

 several may be artistically arranged on one page. In the 

 lower left-hand corner there should appear, neatly printed, 

 written, or typewritten, the following data: the scientific 

 name of the specimen according to the most recent author- 

 ities ; the most widely employed popular name in brackets ; 

 the place and date of collection ; the name of the collector, 

 with a few lines on the color of the flowers and leaves; 

 sexual characters, and the normal form and color of parts 

 that become much distorted and changed through the 

 process of pressing. 



These folios should, as they are being completed, or 

 even when in actual use and being continually added to, 

 be filed in a special cabinet, with the compartments ar- 

 ranged according to the system you are employing in your 

 work as to orders, genera, and so on. 



My hope is that the few paragraphs I have been able 

 to give here on this subject will induce many a boy and 

 girl in various parts of the country to start an herbarium 

 of the trees, shrubs, and plants of the region in which they 

 live. Later I will give other rules for the preservation and 

 illustration of plant-life, such as methods of taking im- 

 prints of leaves for comparison, and so on. 



There is still another powerful adjunct to the flower- 

 student's eqmpment, which must not be overlooked in 

 this preliminary chapter on the siibject : the photographic 

 camera. Flower photography is a very expensive and 

 often very difficult pursuit. Many things enter into it 

 requiring special skill, long training, and experience, be- 

 fore one can hope to be at all successful. Some of the main 

 things to be considered are: the selection of a complete 

 and scientific outfit for studio and field-photography of 

 flowers ; as complete a knowledge as possible of the flowers 

 to be photographed, and the use of a camera and its ac- 

 cessories in the field under all conditions, such as time, 

 place, and weather. Your artistic sense will come power- 

 fully into play here, in the studio as well as in the field, 

 and you will soon realize that the point of view from wliich 

 a flower, a shrub, or a tree is taken makes all the differ- 

 ence in the world when the final result of the operation 

 appears on paper, or is thrown upon the screen at a 

 lecture. Much more may be said on this most impor- 

 tant subject, so I will, from time to time, furnish brief, 

 illustrated accounts in American Forestry as to 

 how all manner of specimens in the vegetable world 

 should be photographed. 



NATIONAL FORESTS GIVEN PERMANENCE 



AS a result of land classification work, more than 

 eight million acres were eliminated from the Na- 

 tional Forests in the last fiscal year, and, in addition, 

 over 1100 individual tracts within the Forests were made 

 available for homestead entry, according to the annual 

 report of Henry S. Graves, Chief of the Forest Service, 

 which emphasizes the necessarily permanent character of 

 the National Forests, and points out the importance of 

 definitely determining the status of the land which the 

 Forests contain. 



"The National Forests," says Mr. Graves, "are gain- 

 ing in stability through the land classification work. It 

 is important for the general public to know what lands 

 are to be retained permanently by the Government, and 

 what lands will be available for agricultural settlement. 

 The whole Forest enterprise is based on the assumption 

 of permanence. All the work is conducted with a \'iew 

 to constructive development of the property and its con- 

 stantly increasing usefulness. 



"Every timber sale is made with a view to future 

 consequences. The work of protection from fire is not 

 only to prevent the destruction of standing timber but 

 to save young growth and encourage the natural repro- 

 duction on lands which have been injured by pre^^ous 

 abuse. Millions of trees are established each year which 

 will not come to maturity for a very long time. A regu- 

 lated system of grazing looks to the upbuilding of 

 the Forest range, as well as to its present use; and 

 the investment of public funds in extensive improve- 

 ments is predicated on the permanence of the Govern- 

 ment enterprise. " 



The need for consolidating land ownership where 

 Government and private lands are interlocked is pointed 

 out by Mr. Graves. Congress has, he states, already 

 authorized an exchange of lands on the Florida, the 

 Oregon, and the Whitman National Forests. Under the 

 same policy exchanges have been or are being negotiated 

 with South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Washington 

 for school lands in the National Forests located in those 

 states. The consimimation of three of these exchanges 

 now awaits final approval by Congress. 



Other measures which will have a far-reaching signifi- 

 cance in relation to the permanence of the National 

 Forests, says the report, are the appropriation by Congress 

 at its last session of ten million dollars for the construc- 

 tion of roads within the Forests and that of three million 

 dollars to extend the National Forests in the eastern 

 mountains by purchase. "The appropriation for the con- 

 struction of roads will permit the opening up of regions 

 heretofore inaccessible, will greatly increase the use of 

 the resources in the Forests, will shorten lines of travel 

 across the states and between communities, will stimu- 

 late prospecting and mining in mineral regions and will 

 aid community upbuilding. 



The importance of having public Forests at the 

 headwaters of important streams has been recognized 

 and greatly emphasized through the appropriation of 

 $3,000,000 for continued purchases of land begun under 

 the so-called Weeks Law. 



