FOREST CONFERENCE IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 



791 



their rightful moisture, so that in 

 Europe the standard way to enrich the 

 soil of a forest is to grow pure beech on 

 it for a revolution — 100 years. We 

 have not reached that stage yet so I 

 am not in favor of allowing the forest 

 to be cluttered up with a tangle of 

 worthless young beech saplings, pre- 

 ferring to extend the available moisture 

 upon the older trees, since we are well 

 off in the matter of humus. But, as a 

 landscape feature, particularly on lake 

 banks and ravine slopes, let us encourage 

 the large beeches and the thrifty half- 

 grown ones, because of their picturesque 

 beauty. And that exotic cousin of our 

 beech, the copper or purple beech, is 

 now offered so cheaply by nurserymen 

 and grows so quickly into an object of 

 striking beauty, that any forest will be 

 enriched by the planting of a few of 



them at salient points. As to soils, 

 both beeches take any base and any 

 locality you choose to offer them. 

 Huge specimens can be found in rich 

 ravine slopes, in swampy fern bottoms, 

 on high dry ridges, in clay, granite, 

 limestone and sand soils, so it seems to 

 matter not at all to the beech where you 

 put it so that the soil is not arid, such 

 as is used by pitch pines and gray 

 birches. In wet soils young beeches 

 will do well in full sunlight, otherwise 

 they need older trees overhead as they 

 will not stand being dried out. A full 

 grown beech, one of the big kind with 

 a 3-foot trunk, exhales 10 tons of water 

 daily through its leaves, and all this 

 must come up through the myriads of 

 feeder roots down in the soil — giving 

 you some idea of the amount of water 

 actually handled by trees. 



FOREST CONFERENCE IN THE 

 WHITE MOUNTAINS. 



THE Annual Forestry Conference 

 in the White Mountains, under 

 the auspices of the Society for 

 Protection of New Hampshire 

 Forests, and of the State Forestry 

 Commission, will take a broader scope 

 this year, and bring together the 

 agricultural interests and the forestry 

 interests, as far as possible, of all of 

 the New England States, together with 

 officers of the American Forestry Asso- 

 ciation who will ask the cooperation of 

 New England organizations in their 

 association's effort to secure the passage 

 by the next Congress of an appropriation 

 of $10,000,000 for the purchase of 

 forest reserves in New England and the 

 Southern Appalachians. 



The chief topic will be the problems 

 of small woodlands and the farmer's 

 woodlot. There will be discussions on 

 planting, thinning, marketing small 

 bodies of timber, and taxation of the 

 woodlot, together with demonstrations 



by experts of planting, thinning, felling 

 and skidding trees. The meetings will 

 take place at the Profile House in 

 Franconia Notch beginning on the 

 evening of September 1 , and continuing 

 through the second and third. This 

 hotel and neighboring hotels and board- 

 ing houses make special rates. 



To a meeting of this scope the Boston 

 Chamber of Commerce, through its 

 agricultural committee, and the Western 

 New England Chamber of Commerce, 

 are lending active cooperation. Mr. 

 Henry S. Graves, Chief of the Forest 

 Service, and Professor J. W. Tourney, 

 Director of the Yale Forest School, 

 are among those who will speak for the 

 foresters. President Kenyon L. 

 Butterficld of the Massachusetts Agri- 

 cidtural College, and Dr. Edward T. 

 Fairchild, President of the New Hamp- 

 shire State College, are among those 

 who will speak for the agriculturists. 



