FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 57 



school as a part of the state university. Counecticiit has appointed a 

 state forester, and has Inade a small appropriation to purchase a forest 

 reserve, and all along the line this movement is pointing up. It will 

 certainly be important. Interest in the state forest work is growing. 



I want to speak briefly of a few other opportunities, only less vast, 

 before referring to some of the specific pieces of work that are pending. 

 In the first place, there is an enormous field opening before the forester 

 who comes in contact with the railroads. The railroads use some 12(1,- 

 ()00,()<)() new ties a year, if my statistics are correct. They use enormous 

 quantities of timber besides for construction in various ways. They own 

 immense areas of land, either in land grant in the west or areas they 

 have acquired in the south and east, and their influence on the side of 

 forestry is going to mean more than almost any other single factor. The 

 bureau has just undertaken a working plan for the Baltimore & Ohio 

 railroad for 125,000 acres in West Virginia, which we believe means the 

 beginning of intimate contact with the great railroads of the country 

 just as fast as we have men to do the work and money to pay for it. That 

 is one of the great opportunities, and it is only one of a dozen which there 

 are not yet men and money enough to handle. 



The chemical uses of wood is another gTeat field just opening up. 



There is urgent need of forestry in the Phillipiues and in Porto Rico. 

 But in the Phillipiues with their 40.000,000 acres of forest, there is a field 

 for forest work which will develop one of the best and most useful 

 systems. 



Interest in forestry is springing up all over the south. In addition 

 to the Texas work referred to 50,000 acres of long-leaf pine is to be taken 

 up in South Carolina, 10,000 acres of hardwoods near Grandfather Moun- 

 tain, in North Carolina ; G2,000 acres of pine in Georgia, 60,000 acres in 

 eastern Tennessee, and a good deal of land, in addition, in the Appalach- 

 ian range. It is fair to say that the southern end of the country, which 

 for a long time has been slow in taking up conservative forestry, is now 

 alive to such interests. The bureau's work in the northeast, in Maine 

 especially, is likely to lead to the adoption of forest methods on a large 

 scale, both by the Great Northern Paper Company spoken of and by 

 many other similar organizations. The work in New York has been 

 referred to. 



Other work before the bureau is the preparation of forest working 

 plans for the national forest reserves. I have mentioned this before. 



In forest investigation the field is so large that it is difficult to talk 

 about it briefly. AVe know so little of our forests, we have actual sta- 

 tistics of so few of the commercial trees, that it is practically possible 

 to do an almost unlimited amount of work in any particular section of 

 the country. 



Among the new subjects, the question of second growth needs investiga- 

 tion. We knoAV something now about certain kinds of second growth — 

 about the time it takes to grow a second crop, and so on — but not enough 

 attention has been given to the subject. 



Enough attention has not been given to small wood lots. The bureau 

 has often been forced to consider large holdings by their very extent. 

 Now we want to do more work for the individual farmer. This means the 

 preparation of working plans for a few as examples and the wide pub- 

 lication of the results. 

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