ii6 Forestry Quarterly. 



LAND OFFICE CHANGE. 



The resignation of Mr. Filibert Roth as Chief of the Division 

 of Forestry of the General Land Office is a severe blow to the 

 honest and rational management of the forest reserves. During 

 the short period of Mr. Roth's administration the regulations of 

 the reserves were better enforced, the existing political appointees 

 were being gradually replaced by better men, the service has been 

 rearranged, properly graded, and provision made for the employ- 

 ment of technically educated men ; on one of the reserves, that of 

 the Black Hills, a regular system of timber sales has been estab- 

 lished ; in these ways and in others the Division had been greatly 

 increa.sed in efficiency. Mr. Roth is to be congratulated and 

 thanked for the fine work he has done and it is most regretable 

 that he should have resigned because his services were needed 

 elsewhere or for some other reason. 



With the announcement of his resignation from the Land Office 

 comes that of his return to his Alma Mater, the University of 

 Michigan, as Professor in Charge of the new Department of For- 

 estry. A short sketch of Prof. Roth's career may be here apropos. 



While still a college student he became interested in forestry 

 and during the last two years of his stay at the University was 

 employed in the timber physics work of the Division of Forestry, 

 Department of Agriculture. On leaving Ann Arbor in 1893 he 

 continued this work wath the Division as Special Agent. The 

 results of his investigations for the succeeding five years are con- 

 tained in several well known bulletins, and he is regarded as the 

 first authority on the subject in this country. With the found- 

 ing of the New York State College of Forestry in 1898 he became 

 Assistant Professor of F'^orestry with special charge of Timber 

 Physics and Exploitation, and continued in this position for three 

 years. From teaching he again returned to Washington, first as 

 Agent of the Bureau of Forestry and then as Chief of the Division 

 of Forestry, Department of the Interior ; his administrative 

 ability and knowledge of Western conditions foretelling the suc- 

 cess he has achieved. During the past year he produced his first 

 private publication,'-'^ an elementary treatise on forestry in general. 



* See page 103 



