524 MISCELLANEOUS. [Dec. 



Miscellaneous. 



White Mountain Foeests. — The New Hampshire people, like 

 those of New York, are becoming awakened to the importance of 

 preserving their forests. The White Mountain forests in the former 

 State are of the same physical and commercial importance to the 

 country as the Adirondacks forests, alluded to in our last issue, are 

 found to be in the State of New York. The forest land is a 

 reservoir which furnishes water to the scores of prosperous towns 

 in the adjacent country. A recent legislative Commission reports 

 that 58 per cent, of the State of New Hampshire is forest land, and 

 says further that the manufacturing interests dependent on the 

 White Mountain should not be asleep on such a vital question, and 

 that it should devise some plan by which the forests of that State 

 can be perpetually preserved. 



The Proposed School for Forestry. — The Select Committee of 

 the House of Commons, appointed on the motion of Sir John 

 Lubbock to inquire into the desirability of establishing a Forest 

 School in England, recently took the evidence of Mr. W. G. Pedder, 

 Eevenue Secretary of the India Office, and well acquainted with the 

 forestal system of India. Mr. Pedder stated that a Forestal Depart- 

 ment was authorized in Bombay in 1846. About that time the 

 revenue of the Indian forests was £40,080. Since then it had 

 risen to a gross revenue of nearly £1,000,000, and a net revenue 

 of over £400,000, and that, he considered, was undoubtedly due to 

 the increased education of forest officials. Instructors were 

 obtained from France and Germany, but latterly chiefly from 

 France, because it was found that the woodlands of England and 

 Scotland were not so well managed as to enable the managers to 

 give instruction. 



Dr. E. Harvey lieed, of Mansfield, Ohio, after a study of 



the subject as it aff'ects its own State, concludes that among the 

 results of the destruction of the forests and the drainage of the land 

 are more wind, more humidity, more rainfall, more dust, more 

 sudden dashes of rain, more sudden changes from one extreme to 

 the other of temperature and moisture, more rapid transmission of 

 water from the periphery to the great basins, robbery of the natural 

 regulators of distribution and diminution of the common supply of 

 springs and wells. These changes have been followed by a decrease 

 of all forms of malarial diseases, and an increase of typhoid fever, 

 catarrh, deafness, and chronic pulmonary troubles, and the increase 

 in wind and dust favours the spread of zymotic and contagious 

 diseases. 



