OUR FORESTRY-PROBLEM. 



225 



in Strabo that has been pointed out to me by M. P. Tannery. Strabo 

 (book XV, chapter xi, 10) mentions tin-mines in Drangiana, a region 

 which corresponds with our Khorassan, below Herat, and toward the 

 western boundaries of modem Afghanistan. 



While tin is rare throughout the world, it is very different with 

 copper, the ores of which are found at a great number of points. The 

 mines of Sinai, not to mention more distant ones, were celebrated in 

 ancient Egypt. The extraction of metallic copper from its ores is also 

 easy. Reasoning from these facts, many archaeologists have supposed 

 that an age of pure copper, or an age in which arms and tools were 

 made of this metal, preceded the bronze age. In order to judge the 

 value of this hypothesis and determine the date at which this ancient 

 navigation began, it would be necessary to possess the analyses of the 

 most ancient objects to which a certain date can be fixed, among the 

 remains of antiquity that have come down to us. According to analy- 

 ses of this character, bronze existed in Egypt nearly two thousand 

 years before the Christian era. The analysis of the figurine of Tello 

 seems to indicate, on the other hand, that tin was not yet known at the 

 time when that object was made, or that it had not yet been brought 

 to the Persian Gulf. This is, however, only an induction, since some 

 religious circumstance or another may have determined the exclusive 

 employment of copper in the making of the figurine ; and it would 

 be necessary to examine many more objects and more various to 

 reach certainty in that matter. It has, nevertheless, seemed to me 

 that it would be interesting to indicate the problems of a general 

 character that are raised by the analyses of the metals of Tello. — 

 Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scien- 

 tifique. 



OUR FORESTRY-PROBLEM.* 



By B. E. FEENOW, 



CHIEF OF THE FOKESTEY DlVISIOIf, DEPAETIIENT OF AGEICULTiniE. 



DOUBTLESS you have all seen, during the last ten years, numer- 

 ous references in newspapers, magazines, etc., to the necessity of 

 forest-preservation. This plea, however, even in this country, is not 

 as novel and of as recent date as may be imagined. As far back as 

 our colonial times, the fear of an exhaustion of lumber-supply alarmed 

 Kew England legislators ; and as early as 1801, the Massachusetts 

 Society offered its prizes for timber-planting. "We may smile over the 

 fears of those times when railroads had not yet revolutionized methods 

 of transportation, bringing the whole world under contribution for sup- 

 plies. Yet, while those fears were premature, they were nevertheless 

 prophetic, and the very railroads which have opened up the vast forest 



* A Lecture given at the National Museum, "Washington, D. C, April 2, 1887. 



VOL. XXXII. — 15 



