636 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



and denunciations of the inertia with which New Zealand has watched 

 the serious depletion of her Kauri forests. There can be less criti- 

 cism of the material of this character, however, than of the strik-' 

 ingly insufficient observations and the almost complete lack of definite 

 data on which the glowing picture of the future is based, with the 

 trumpet call for New Zealand to undertake forestry under the promise 

 of securing wonderful results. In short, the book is something which 

 is undoubtedly useful in the New Zealand forestry movement, but it 

 will hardly live in the literature of forestry as a reference book. With 

 the establishment of a "technical, nonpolitical forest department on 

 the lines of the American Forest Service," which Mr. Hutchins urges 

 for New Zealand, we can expect publications far better from the 

 technical viewpoint but possiblv not more useful as propaganda. 



E. 



Jack Pine. By William Dent Sterrett, Forest Examiner, U. S. De- 

 partment of Agriculture Bulletin 820, May 23, 1920. 



When Sterrett writes a monograph on a tree, one can expect abso- 

 lute honesty, complete absence of bluff, and painstaking care through- 

 out. These expectations are fully realized in his latest work on jack 

 pine. It is a careful compilation and office analysis of data on this 

 minor species. Unquestionably it is useful and will probably stand 

 as the standard reference work on the subject for many years. Since 

 some of the data now published for the first time was collected as 

 far back as 1901, the bulletin shows the value of having a central 

 agency where data may be allowed to accumulate until it can be com- 

 piled and analyzed. 



An outstanding feature of this bulletin is the inclusion of Professor 

 Roth's basis' of site classification, with jack pine as a standard C 

 species. Apparently this method of handling a vexatious problem 

 works well in this case, but is the Forest Service committed to fol- 

 lowing the Roth classification for all species, or is this case only a trial 

 on a convenient dog? 



This monograph is useful but it is a compilation and has conse- 

 quently the weaknesses of a compilation. With his usual uncompro- 

 mising honesty, Sterrett has listed in the appendix and has indicated 

 by copious footnotes the sources of his data and the authorities for 

 his statements. One wonders whether Sterrett himself has ever 

 worked in jack pine until in the appendix a statement is discovered 



