438 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1910. 



Only brief mention can here be made of the important advance 

 which has been made by the States in promoting forest preservation 

 through the giving of advice to private owners. This has been done 

 through the appointment of State foresters capable of advising, and 

 expected to advise, those wishing to learn how to apply forestry to 

 their holdings. State foresters, who are technically trained men, 

 have been appointed and are now in office in California, Connecti- 

 cut, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New 

 Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, 

 and Wisconsin. As advisers these men are most useful to farmers 

 and other wood-lot owners who could not afford to call in a pro- 

 fessional forester at their own expense, but whose small individual 

 holdings form in the aggregate no inconsiderable part of the tim- 

 bered area of the East. Notwithstanding the conservatism which" 

 is supposed to make the average farmer slow to adopt new methods, 

 it is at least open to debate whether forestry is not making actual 

 progress faster among these small owners than among our lumber- 

 men. FaiTners have, indeed, long been practicing a kind of forestry, 

 in that they have been drawing supplies of wood continuously from 

 the same area ; and since wood lots are characteristic of parts of the 

 country which have been longest settled and are most densely popu- 

 lated, they are exceptionally favorably situated with regard to mar- 

 kets and the prices obtainable. It is not improbable that, if things are 

 left to take their natural course, unproved methods of handling wood- 

 lands on the part of small owners may become general in States 

 which have competent State foresters before the owners of large 

 tracts in the great sources of virgin supply are converted to the 

 practice of forest management. 



As indifference to forest destruction has been replaced in the public 

 mind by a conviction that the question of future timber sujjplies is 

 one of serious public concern, a sentiment has developed in favor of 

 legislation to prevent destructive lumbering. The laws which have 

 been proposed look generally toward either (1) the retention of a 

 part of the existing stand, or (2) the lessening of the fire risk after 

 lumbering. Proposed laws of the first kind have set a diameter 

 limit below which timber should not be cut. From the standpoint of 

 technical forestry such a requirement does not meet the need because 

 of its rigidity. Decision as to what trees should be cut and what 

 left in order to make best use of the productive power of the forest 

 can be wisely made only .when specific conditions are taken account 

 of. In the same way laws prescribing that all slash must be burned 

 are open to criticism as substituting a rule of thumb for judgment. 

 Fortunately the working out of a better way has followed the pro- 

 posal of such a law in Minnesota. After a Lake State forest fire 

 conference which brought together last winter representatives of 



