Comment. 367 



the public interest, and he must in such proclamation limit the time 

 during which such entry and such acts shall be prohibited." 



What language ! 



After all, the efficiency of fire control lies in the men in charge 

 rather than in the law, and in the morals of the community more 

 than in the patrol. 



It is interesting to note the revival of ideas and directions of 

 work in the Forest Service which were originally devised in the 

 old Division of Forestry. The "timber physics" work, to which 

 the old Division had given much prominence as providing the 

 most direct means of reducing waste in the use of resources, was 

 abandoned as "not germane to forestry," but has been revived 

 with appropriations five to six times as large as the old Division 

 could secure, and forms an important part of the investigatory 

 work of the Service. Now, the "phenological observations," 

 which for some time were carried on by the old Division, have 

 again come upon the program of the Service. This was the first 

 line of work which the reconstructed Division instituted in 1886, 

 more for the purpose of getting into relation with, and interesting 

 a larger number of people more definitely in tree growth — that is, 

 for educational purposes, "to promote an interest in forestry which 

 may lead to a better appreciation of its aims and methods" — 

 than for any practical results that might be expected from it. 



It is well known that the original idea of contemporaneous ob- 

 servations of the phases of plant development — the phenology of 

 plants 1 — first proposed by Hofmeister long ago, had in view 

 to bring out climatic conditions. It was supposed that the phe- 

 nomena of budding, leafing, blossoming, leaf fall, fruiting and 

 ripening, etc., gave a better index of climatic difference than 

 statements of the single factors of temperature and humidity. 

 While, theoretically, this supposition is true, practically, difficul- 

 ties arise in selecting objects of observation, continuing observa- 

 tions on the same objects for sufficient time, and then interpreting 

 the results. 



The Smithsonian Institute had attempted this line of work 

 before, and published a volume of observations compiled by 

 Dr. Hough, some 30 or 40 years ago, but did not continue it. 



The enterprise launched by the old Division collapsed for lack 

 of clerical assistance to compile the data, and the impossibility 



