ARBORICULTURE. 



261 



(8) No appreciable effects occur within 

 the State in which forests are located to 

 compare with the damage done in other 

 States, often far removed. 



(9) On account of local corporate 

 power, individual States are unable or 

 unwilling" to control the trust. 



(10) National interstate legislation is 

 the only remedy. 



(11) The recent ruling of the Supreme 

 Court in the case of the State of Kansas 

 vs. Colorado, regarding irrigating waters, 

 is applicable to this subject, id. est., forest 

 influences. 



(12) The abandonment of many thou- 

 sand square miles of former forest areas 

 by lumbermen, after removing all the 

 timber, forces the worthless remaining 

 land upon the State, which can realize no 

 income from it, but must maintain it at 

 great expense to the people. 



(13) The loss to the Nation from the 

 existence of so large an area of non-tax- 

 able, barren property. 



(14) Necessity of importing from 

 abroad the timber required after removal 

 of our forests. 



(15) The greatest curse possible is a 

 treeless nation. 



Navigable rivers flowing through many 

 States have their volumes increased im- 

 moderately, at times, and are again 

 shrunken so as to obstruct navigation, 

 from the rapid melting of the ice and 

 snow upon the mountains in far-distant 

 States, which has been caused by the re- 

 moval of the forests upon these mountains 

 and valleys. For this the injured locali- 

 ties have no recourse except by national 

 legislation. 



River and harbor improvement are in- 

 creasing annually because there are no 

 forests to retard the flow of water, while 

 the levees of many States have frequent 

 crevasses and must be maintained at great 



expense from the same cause. Yet no 

 State is afflicted by the injuries caused 

 within its borders, and can not alone con- 

 trol the cause which exists in another 

 commonwealth. 



Under existing circumstances it is im- 

 possible to induce great lumbering corpo- 

 rations to adopt conservative methods in 

 their operations ; the cream is skimmed 

 from the propert}', immense waste occurs, 

 the continuation of the forests being far- 

 thest from their aims. 



Under these conditions the land is being 

 rapidly denuded of all that gives it value, 

 the time rapidly approaching when the 

 entire forest area will disappear. 



The rociky, mountainous lands thus 

 stripped of the timber will be thrown back 

 upon the Nation, or State in which they 

 are situated, the soil soon eroded, leaving 

 the property valueless for taxation and 

 productive of no income for the support 

 of the Nation. 



These are ample reasons for stringent 

 restrictive laws under which the forests 

 may continue productive to the country. 



THE POLICY 01^ FOREST RESERVES. 



Senator Hepburn, of Idaho, is making 

 a determined assault upon the President's 

 policy of establishing forest reserves. 



In a recent address at Spokane, Wash., 

 he said: 



"I purpose to urge the adoption of my 

 bill, introduced at the last session, when 

 the next Congress convenes. This is de- 

 signed to take out of the hands of the 

 President the right to establish any more 

 forest reserves. No one in Idaho indorses 

 the Administration's forest reserve policy, 

 as applied in our State." 



A correspondent in Spokane, in a letter 

 to Arboriculture, says : 



"The creation of four new forest re- 

 serves in Northern Idaho and the exten- 



