5o8 



CONSERVATION 



expended up to date, including the 

 $50,000,000, is $145,000,000. The last 

 appropriation act carried for next 

 year's expenses, $29,177,000. The total 

 appropriations made to date are $170,- 

 964,468.58. Therefore, within the orig- 

 inal total of $195,000,000 there are left 

 not quite $25,000,000. It is now sup- 

 posed that the canal will cost altogether 

 about $300,000,000. No doubt there are 

 men who will cry out that this is a sheer 

 waste of money. The same kind of men 

 ridiculed the Suez Canal in its beginning 

 as a chimerical scheme, but it has paid 

 from twelve to seventeen per cent, on 

 the investment, and there need be no 

 fear that in this respect history will not 

 repeat itself in the case of the Panama 

 Canal. A careful estimate, based on 

 facts, shows an income of $100,009,000, 

 during the first ten-year period of the 

 canal's operation. 



What the Panama Canal will mean 

 to the world in the way of shortening 

 distances in the matter of transporta- 

 tion and the consequent saving of time 

 and expense in the way of coal con- 

 sumption and freight costs may be 

 realized when it is stated that the whole 

 distance from New York to San Fran- 

 cisco around Cape Horn, is 13,000 miles. 

 Through the Panama Canal the dis- 

 tance will be only 5,000 miles, a saving 

 of 8,000 miles, a distance equal to two 

 and a half times across the United 

 States. When the battle- ship Oregon 

 made her famous trip from San Fran- 

 cisco to Santiago, it took her sixty-six 

 days. If the canal had then been built 

 she could have made the trip in fifteen 

 days — less than one-fourth of the time. 

 The canal will probably be opened by 

 July I, 19 14. 



c^^^^ 



NEWS AND NOTES 



Arizona Benefits from National 

 Forest Administration 



A STRIKING illustration of the ben- 

 "^*- efits of forest management by Un- 

 cle Sam has just been reported from 

 southern Arizona. In this region fuel 

 of any kind is exceedingly scarce and 

 difficult to get. It is supplied chiefly by 

 Mexicans, who go up into the moun- 

 tains with burros, cut the fuel from jun- 

 iper and oak trees, and then take it out 

 in small loads on the burros. 



In the past, the ranchers living at 

 the mouths of the canyons in the Dra- 

 goon Mountains have prevented the 

 Mexicans from reaching the most ac- 

 cessible timber, and perhaps justly so, 

 because promiscuous cutting would un- 

 questionably have damaged the water- 

 shed and unsteadied the flow of water 

 in these canyons, on which the ranchers 

 were dependent for irrigation. Since 

 the establishment of the National For- 

 est, however, the cutting of wood has 

 been carefully supervised, and only dead 



and mature trees the removal of which 

 would not injure the watershed, have 

 been cut. 



Careful cutting of this kind has been 

 allowed in the areas which have here- 

 tofore been closed to use, and as a re- 

 sult, the price of wood has actually been 

 reduced in the small towns around the 

 National Forests. For instance, in 

 Pearce, an important mining town nine 

 miles from the Forest, the price of wood 

 previous to the creation of the National 

 Forest was $8 per cord. It is now only 

 $6, and this decrease can be wholly at- 

 tributed to the improved administra- 

 tion of the Forest. 



&' ^ tt? 



Japan Makes Innovations in Forest Management 



JAPAN is the only government in the 

 world which takes upon itself the 

 working of its lumber business, accord- 

 ing to Consul-General Henry B. Miller, 

 of Yokohama, in a report in which he 



