EDITORIAL 



A 



N excellent plan for inspiring for- 

 est planting by cities and towns 

 of a State is oulined in the pro- 

 visions of the Town Forest Con- 

 test instituted by the Massachusetts 

 State Forestry Association, which of- 

 fers as a prize, to plant to white pine 

 fifty acres of forest land belonging to 

 the winning city or town. The fifty 

 acres thus planted will contain 1,200 

 three-year-old white pine transplants to 

 the acre. 



The city or town entering the contest 

 must have acquired at least 100 acres 

 of land and set it aside officiallv as a 



"Town Forest," and fifty acres of this 

 land must be planted to three-year-old 

 white ])ine. This planting must be 

 done not later than June 1, inio, and 

 at least ten cities or towns must enter 

 the contest. 



Interest in forestry has been growing 

 so steadily throughout Massachusetts, 

 where, by the way, the American For- 

 estry Association has its largest State 

 membership, that it should not be diffi- 

 cult to get ten or more entrants for 

 this contest, and such a substantial prize 

 as (>0,000 young white pine trees 

 planted is worth striving for. 



MANY thousands of teachers 

 from e\ery State in the Union 

 will tuni to their class-rooms 

 this fall with well-defined 

 ideas of the value of trees and of the 

 forests, the need of protecting the for- 

 ests from fire, the part the lumberman 

 has played in the })rogress and develop- 

 ment of the country, and the need of 

 teaching forestry to their pupils. These 

 ideas were implanted in their minds by 

 the officers and members of the Ameri- 

 can Forestry Association, who spoke to 

 them at Chautauqua, New York, on 

 July 9 and 10. There, at large public 

 meetings, addresses, several of them 

 illustrated, were given by some of the 

 most able foresters in the country, men 

 who told of the birth, the l)attle for life 

 and the growth f)f the forests; of their 

 dread enemy, fire ; of what part they 

 take in the mental and physical develop- 

 ment of a nation ; of the attitude of the 



lumbermen towards forest conserva- 

 tion; of how lumber is made; of what 

 the forests do in the preservation of 

 water supply and water power ; and of 

 how forestry should be taught in the 

 schools. 



There has never been in all the his- 

 tory of the forestry movement an 

 occasion when so many people, repre- 

 senting so many sections of the coun- 

 try and bearing the close relation they 

 do in the development of public thought 

 and activity, received so much informa- 

 tion and instruction in conservation of 

 anv kind, as did the evening audiences 

 in the great am]:'hitheatre at Chau- 

 tauqua during these two days. It was 

 an accom])lishment in forestry educa- 

 tion which will bear fruit within the 

 next year in thousands of places, and in 

 the minds of tens of thousands of 

 students. 



607 



