CURRENT LITERATURE AND REVIEWS. 



Eighth Annual Report of the Forest, Fish and Game Commission 

 of the State of New York. Albany. Pp. 164. Illustrated, 



In this report are several articles of interest and of importance. 

 Mr. E. A. Sterling, now Field Assistant in the Bureau of Forestr}^ 

 describes a number of successful chestnut orchards. Mr. Pettis, 

 in detail, describes the manner of collecting a large qviantity of 

 Red Spruce seed. The seed has since been used in the State 

 nursery at Saranac Junction and in broadcast sowing of bare 

 lands. 



The Forest, Fish and Game Commission has been curtailed, 

 perhaps wisel}-, in its range of work by the constitutional amend- 

 ment forbidding cutting on state lands. The 150,000 acres of 

 waste land in the Adirondack Park have no economic future in 

 the natural course of events ; the acres which may slowly grow 

 up in poplar and birch are as nothing to the many which burn 

 and reburn ; that the state is duty bound to protect these lands, 

 to render tliem productive, the Commission has recognized. The 

 wisest and most important advance in policy yet made by the 

 Commission was the starting of artificial reforestation. 



The first large plantation made is described in this report. Six 

 hundred thousand plants were placed over a tract of 700 acres, 

 more or less, the cost averaging less than one-half a cent per tree. 



The plantation is in the midst of a large stretch of flat sandy 

 country similar to thousands of acres in the northern townships of 

 the region. Originally covered by a fine growth of pine and under- 

 wood, it was lumbered, burned, and again burned, until of the forest 

 there now remain but a few charred stumps of the pine. The depth 

 of humus was burnt with the timber, bringing the white silicious 

 soil slowly to the surface where it still remains, scattered in strong 

 contrast to the intermediate patches of blackest ashes. Ground 

 cover of brake, huckleberry, alder and various grasses and sedges 

 has struggled in scantily on the lower levels ; on the upper a few 

 scattered poplar have started and lived on in spite of frequent set- 

 backs from frost and drouth. 



Viewed on a hot May day the tract presented as melancholy 

 and deplorable an example of desolation as could well be found. 

 As a site for a plantation the dry loose sand, the almost total lack 



