324 EDITORIAL NOTES. [March 



FoKEST Conservancy in the United States. — Our New York 

 contemporary, Forest and Stream, at the close of an able series of 

 articles on the national forest question, advocates the resumption 

 by the State of all the remaining forests, cutting down the extrava- 

 gant annual output of twenty billion feet of lumber to four billions, 

 the estimated capacity of the United States forests under proper 

 management. Of course this would make a rise in the world's 

 timber markets, of which an advance of twenty dollars a thousand in 

 price would be but the beginning. Still, besides keeping exi.sting 

 forests permanently stocked, a revenue would also result sufficient 

 to plant a forest area equal to all possible requirements of the 

 country. 



Meanwhile action is about to be taken in more definite tliough 

 less ambitious lines. A bill has been introduced into the National 

 Legislature by which five national forest conservators are to be 

 appointed, each at a salary of one thousand dollars a year ; and which 

 also provides that the timber lands are not to be sold hei'cafter 

 except in blocks of 25,000 acres each, or at least "at anyone sale." 

 Legislation against forest fires is being actively agitated for ; and a 

 bill for the better care of the Yellowstone Park is being pushed 

 throueh the Senate. 



Forest Colonization. — Professor Brown, in his paper read at the 

 Montreal meeting of the British Association, says that a peopled 

 agricultural country is an impossibility without trees. And he applies 

 this dictum to the prairies of the North-West, exhibiting on a 

 diagram the varied plantings that should be undertaken in settle- 

 ments in such localities for roadside shade, shelter for dwellings, 

 cultivated farm crops, grazings, open and enclosed, head water con- 

 servation, wind breaks, and climatic amelioration. The profitable 

 financial results are exhibited with the skill of a practical forester. 

 For many of our working brethren of the axe here is an un- 

 developed field. Colonial governments and land companies should 

 study this almost neglected question. We mean to return to its 

 discussion. Meanwhile we note how Miss Mary Wagner tells, in 

 her Transcontinental Letters in the Rural New Yorlccr, that at 

 Eastern Washington a forest culture claim of 160 acres can be 

 taken, costing only the planting of a certain number of trees 

 each year. But Locust, Box, Elder, Lombardy Poplars, and other 

 trees worthless for timber are planted, the wood of which, how- 

 ever, can be sold to papermakers. 



