528 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



to improve and protect health ? Many people give no thought to taking 

 a vacation, as if such waste of human vitality, such failure to restore 

 the normal drain or strength could ever be wise or creditable. 



I was a listener at a recent conversation between two physicians, 

 in which the belief was expressed that as a result of the public taking 

 more exercise and pleasure in the open, and especially the mountains, 

 the medical profession was becoming less attractive to doctors of 

 general practice and that the solution was going to be dependence on 

 ability to have arrangements with a few families to look after their 

 health for an annual consideration. Both agreed that the general 

 health of the public was improving to such an extent that there was no 

 field for the common practitioner. 



Recreation is without doubt a by-product, but a very essential one to 

 the nation. The time is coming when this by-product of the forests 

 will be more generally indulged in. People are just waking up to 

 the advantages of outdoor sport. 



If other interests must at times be sacrificed in order to preserve 

 unusual bits of landscape for human use, and that will rarely if ever 

 be really necessary, though possibly desirable, it will be justified on 

 the grounds of the largest service to the public. Utility roads can 

 often be varied to make it a little more pleasing or to reach some scenic 

 point of interest, without materially increasing its cost or wasting the 

 timber resource. Timber along scenic roads, unusually beautiful lakes 

 or stream sections, can be left either wholly untouched or so cut as not 

 to impair the beauty or charm of the landscape without a material 

 loss of economic returns. 



State foresters, in attendance at the National and State Parks Con- 

 ference at Des Moines, Iowa, January 10-12, were responsible for the 

 resolution recognizing the fundamental value of forest recreation and 

 advocating the correlation of the recreational use of our National, State, 

 county, and municipal forests with a like use on other publicly owned 

 areas. 



While there are among recreationists those who prefer privacy and 

 isolation, those who are in search of knowledge of plant, insect, and 

 bird life in the interests of science, the big majority is made up of 

 visitors from large centers of population, to whom the operations of 

 the lumberman and the flockmaster are interesting. The sawmill, or 

 a band of sheep, is a novelty to the average tourist and just an added 



