Current Literature. ■ 463 



Sixteenth Annual Report of the Forestry Commission of Minne- 

 sota, for the year ipio. 184 pp. 



With this report closes the long and valuable service of the 

 forestry commissioner, formerly chief fire warden, General C. C. 

 Andrews, whose interest in forestry began some forty years ago, 

 when Minister to Sweden. On April 12, 191 1, the office was 

 legislated out and a state forester with scientific training under a 

 Forestry Board, similar to the Wisconsin arrangement was sub- 

 stituted. Thus closes the first mainly educational stage of estab- 

 lishing forest policy in Minnesota, which General Andrews effic- 

 iently and fearlessly pursued, and it is to be hoped that the states- 

 manlike, cheese-paring attitude of the legislature which hampered 

 the chief fire warden's work may have also come to an end. 



With reference to the unprecedented dry season of 1910, cul- 

 minating in the tornado-swept fatal Baudette forest fire of Octo- 

 ber 7th, in which 29 people perished and a million dollars worth 

 of property was destroyed, he thinks that if the legislature of 1909 

 had apropriated the $39,000 he asked, instead of only $21,000, he 

 could have continued ranger service after September first and 

 that probably the calamity would not have occurred. 



For pay and expense of patrols and rangers and necessary fire 

 lines, lookouts and telephones and for suppressing fires, he rec- 

 ommends an annual appropriation of $200,000, and $30,000 in 

 addition for prosecutions. "The forest fire laws" he says, "will 

 not be respected unless enforced. The state cannot keep a watch- 

 man over every heedless person in the forest regions. Examples 

 must be made of those who violate the law, so that others will be 

 restrained from negligence in the use of fire." 



Of special interest are the references to the practicability of 

 burning slash, quoting especially Mr. F. E. Weyerhaeuser, who 

 having had experience with this practice in the Leech Lake Indian 

 Reservation logging, believes such legislation as was defeated in 

 1908 would now be supported by lumbermen and the proposition 

 is supported by a majority of the fire wardens as practicable. Yet 

 the bill of the Forestry Commissioner providing for such slash- 

 burning was not pressed in the legislature for 191 1, but the law 

 instituting the State Forester places properly in his discretion the 

 ordering of such burning. 



Altogether this bill, which provides for an annual appropriation 



