NEWS AND NOTES. 



Senator Smith, of Maryland, a lumberman of many years' ex- 

 perience and a member of the National Forest Reservation Com- 

 mission, has introduced in Congress a bill providing for the 

 appropriation of $500,000 annually to acquire lands along the 

 Potomac River adjacent to Washington, for a national park and 

 forestry purposes. The provisions of the bill in regard to the 

 acquirement of the land and other legal phases are similar to 

 those of the Weeks' bill. Five per cent, of the receipts from 

 timber sales are to be paid to the States in which the forest may 

 be located. 



Press reports indicate that serious insect devastations are occur- 

 ring in the spruce forests of Maine, the damage being caused by 

 the sawfly, which destroyed most of the tamarack in Maine in 

 the early 8o's. It is reported that the present outbreak is con- 

 fined to spruce and for this reason it was not believed that the 

 insect could be the sawfly. The State Department of Agricul- 

 ture, however, has identified the insect as the sawfly, claiming 

 that the damage is due to slits made in the smaller twigs by the 

 female insect in preparing a place to deposit her eggs. 



New York has added another nursery to its list of State forest 

 activities. It has put under cultivation at Geysers, about two 

 miles from Saratoga Springs, about six acres in charge of F. A. 

 Gaylord, with M. D. Steele as local superintendent. Of the 

 1,400,000 seedlings transplanted, 1,100,000 were white pine, 250,- 

 000 Scotch pine, and 50,000 tamarack. 



The New York State Superintendent of Weights has notified 

 his scalers that 16-inch sticks piled 4x8 feet do not make a cord. 

 A full cord is 8x4x4 feet. Since the sticks in a ship cord are 52 

 inches long, it is likely that the woodsmen will be legally sus- 

 tained in a demand for the extra value of their cords over and 

 above the 4-foot lengths. 



The New York State Conservation Commission, created by a 



