NEWS AND NOTES 



201 



cent is covered with merchantable timber, 

 20 per cent bears stands of unmerchantable 

 timber, largely young growth, and 10 per 

 cent is grass or brush land and barren areas. 



order, and nearly $50,000,000 of capital in- 

 vested in timber operations was represented 



Mr. Sterling's Change 



Mr. E. A. Sterling, for some years in 

 charge of the forestry work of the Pennsyl- 

 vania Railroad, resigned on February 15 and 

 opened offices as a consulting forest and 

 timber engineer at i;!.31-2 Real Estate Trust 

 Building, Philadelphia. Mr. Sterling is very 

 well known all over the United States as 

 one of its leading foresters thoroughly con- 

 versant with all branches of the work and 

 he is expected to make a great success of 

 his new work. 



State Land Prices 



Junius E. Beal, of the Public Domain Com- 

 mission of Michigan, writes: "We have just 

 made a step in advance at a meeting of our 

 Public Domain Commission in putting a 

 minimum price of $3.00 an acre on state 

 lands to be sold. Heretofore a great deal 

 of Michigan land has been sold at a dollar 

 an acre. We will boost it again before long." 



Serious Situation 



A dispatch from Banning, Cal., says : "One 

 lone ranger remains on duty in the great 

 Angeles national forest north of Banning, 

 and other rangers having been furloughed 

 for the reason that the treasury of the For- 

 est Service is many thousand dollars short of 

 having enough money to pay running ex- 

 penses. 



"The situation in the national forests here- 

 about is regarded as extremely hazardous, 

 as there are many square miles of fine forest 

 literally at the mercy of fortune. Lack of 

 rain has made the forest very dry and should 

 a fire be started there is no telling when 

 it could be vanquished. The unprotected 

 watershed supplies many prosperous fruit 

 colonies, including Banning, Beaumon, Red- 

 lands and the Bear valley water shed, which 

 supplies the Riverside groves." 



Want Fire Protection 



Strongly urging Congress to preserve in- 

 tact the $1,000,000 appropriation for forest 

 fire fighting, the Western Pine Manufac- 

 turers' Association went on record at the 

 annual meeting at Spokane, Wash., with a 

 resolution that will be telegraphed to all 

 Senators and and Congressmen of the west- 

 ern states. 



The measure, as passed unanimously, re- 

 cites the disastrous fires of 1910 in Idaho 

 and Washington, tells of the death of 100 

 men on the fire lines and demands in the 

 strongest terms that the appropriation be 

 made to prevent a repetition of the disaster. 



Some fifty manufacturers were on hand 

 when President William Deary, of the Pot- 

 latch Company, called the association to 



Preventing Forest Fires 



Seeking greater protection from fire in tla- 

 forest preserves of New York State, the Con- 

 servation Commission introduced in the Leg- 

 islature a bill making it a misdemeanor to 

 start a camplire on or near forest lands with- 

 out first clearing away the brush and leaves 

 for at least ten feet on all sides; to start 

 a fire on or near forest or brush land and 

 leave it unquenched; or to throw or drop a 

 lighted match, cigar or cigarette into any 

 combustible material without immediately 

 extinguishing it. 



The Moth Pest Bogey- 

 Writing of the situation in Massachusetts, 

 Allen Chamberlin says : "Things are cer- 

 tainly looking uu in the gypsy moth war. It 

 is a joyful spectacle to see the State forester 

 standing before a committee of the Legisla- 

 ture and asking for a reduced appropriation, 

 and it is no less cheering to hear the Fed- 

 eral Government's entomologist saying that 

 the imported parasites are actually jjeginning 

 to give an account of themselves. This does 

 not mean that the day has been saved, and 

 that we can lay down our arms in the near 

 future and let the 'bug' go hang, but it 

 does indicate that the seven years of per- 

 sistent effort and the expenditure of more 

 than two million dollars of State money, 

 together with fully as much more of munic- 

 ipal and private funds, has been to some 

 purpose, and that the greatest danger has 

 been passed." 



After the Bark Borer 



With the assistance of the Government 

 Bureau of Entomology, Henry Ireland, 

 United States Forest Supervisor from 

 Sumpter, Oregon, is seeking a bug to catch 

 a bug that is destroying the pine forests in 

 the Blue Mountains and other Eastern 

 Oregon districts. The insect which the super- 

 visor is after is commonly called bark-borer. 

 Although it appears in nearly all the for- 

 ests of the state, it is kept down by natural 

 checks in most localities and it is only in 

 the pine forests of Eastern Oregon that it 

 has become alarmingly destructive. Mr. Ire- 

 land said that in one district infested by 

 the borers they had moved southward over 

 a broad area for about 40 miles since 1907, 

 destroying about 40 per cent of the yellow 

 pine timber they attacked. 



160,000 Acres Secured 



Solicitor George P. McCabe, of the De- 

 partment of Agriculture, has drawn up the 

 purchase contracts for the 160,000 acres of 

 land bargained for by the Government in 

 the Southern Appalachian Mountains. 



Within the next few months Uncle Sam 

 will have a national forest comprising 160,- 



