182 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
This specimen, the cast of which will be put on exhibition soon, measured 
nine feet in length and was caught about forty-five miles off Block Island, 
a region the fish reaches in July, appearing off No Man’s Land a little later, 
and as far north as Bar Harbor in August. The swordfish is the only species 
of its kind. It belongs to the mackerel type with body greatly narrowed 
just in front of the tail fin, the rapid motion of the slender posterior end of 
the body and of the tail fin sending the fish at high velocity through open 
seas. It is reported to be a creature radiantly beautiful in sun-lighted 
water, as with grace of form and motion, clothed in the iridescent colors of 
feldspar, it now shimmers in contrast with the hues of the sea, now blends 
with them. The swordfish has strength even great enough to penetrate 
ships and, as is proved by many authentic reports, has often had the in- 
clination to use this strength. The species, although widely distributed 
through the seas of the world, has recently become more rare. Fishermen 
fear that in a very short period of years it will be extinct along the Atlantic 
coast. 
A NOTE FROM THE FORESTRY HALL 
HE Honorable Mr. Karl Petraschek of Vienna, who is in America to 
study forestry conditions, stopped in New York this summer on 
his way to Washington and the West and spent several days study- 
ing the collection of North American trees in the Museum’s Forestry Hall. 
Mr. Petraschek has been Chief Forester of Bosnia and Herzegovina for 
more than twenty years. In addition to this practical work in Austria, 
which includes the famous reclamation of the Karst, a 600,000-acre tract 
of barrens, he has studied the forests of other countries also, namely, Ger- 
many, France with Algeria and Tunis, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Rou- 
mania and Servia, this last country through having been called there as 
expert for the reorganization of Servia’s system of forest management. 
Mr. Petraschek’s pleasure in the Jesup Collection was great; he declared 
it to be, quoting his words, “a sample for the world, in its complete display 
of the wood itself, in arrangement and ‘groupment,’ as made now for a 
great part of the hall, in the models of leaves, flowers and fruits, which 
are so like nature that they give a better idea than a good picture, and also 
in the labels, especially those with small maps, indicating graphically the 
dispersal.” America can learn much from Europe in all forestry matters. 
As proof stand the four months of study spent last winter in Germany by 
forty-five Americans, sons of lumbermen and forest owners and students 
of the Biltmore Forest School. It is therefore gratifying to realize that 
