News and Notes. 295 



The Austrian government has gone into the lumber business 

 by building a sawmill for the cutting of cross-ties for the State 

 Railway. Its output will be about 1,500,000 ties per year. 



Forestry education in Great Britain is developing rapidly. A 

 new chair of forestry was instituted April i in the Royal College 

 of Science, Dublin, and Professor Augustine Henry, already 

 known as organizer of the forestry school at Cambridge, was ap- 

 pointed. Prof. Henry is not a forester by profession, having 

 started as a physician, and his approach to forestry work came 

 through dendrological studies, to which he was led by a longer 

 sojourn in China. 



On January i6th, a New York State Forestry Association was 

 organized in Syracuse. We use the indefinite article advisedly, 

 for in 1885 such an association was organized in Utica, Ex- 

 President Roosevelt, then a young Assembly man, being in the 

 chair. The meeting, well attended, was brought about by the 

 efforts of the then president and secretary of the American 

 Forestry xA-ssociation, Judge Warren Higley, and Mr. Fernow. 

 The association, however, was never very active, and as far as we 

 can find out may be considered defunct, leaving free field to the 

 new association. 



Pleasures for protection of forests against fire have never been 

 so energetically pushed as during the last year, especially in 

 Canada. The idea of private effort, so effectively inaugurated by 

 the Western Protective Association has been imitated in Quebec 

 by the organization of the St. Maurice Forest Protective Asso- 

 ciation. This association is composed of limit holders in the St. 

 Maurice Valley, Quebec. A manager, three inspectors and 50 

 rangers for patrol work were employed during the past season. 

 As a result, while 97 fires were extinguished, only one attained 

 proportions of any consequence, and this was in an old cutting. 

 In addition to patrol, a start has been made in the construction of 

 permanent improvements such as trails, telephone lines and look- 

 out stations- The cost is met by an assessment upon limit holders 

 in proportion to acreage, aided by a contribution from the Quebec 

 Government, in consideration of the protection of Provincial 

 property. 



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