120 Fortieth Annual Meeting 



$8,000,000 worth of raw furs are exported yearly, together 

 with as much more used for home consumption. 



Our forests not only sustain and protect the wild life, 

 which includes the salmon and trout in the rivers, as well 

 as the deer and birds in the forests; they hold the soil and 

 conserve the waters; they protect the fertile lands from 

 droughts and floods, and work against excessive heat and 

 cold; they sustain and protect the general fish life in our 

 lakes and streams. I believe that soil erosion, due to 

 deforestation, was the final cause of the disappearance of 

 salmon in Lake Ontario and its tributaries where they were 

 once so abundant. 



President Taft in his January message stated that millions 

 of acres of public lands had been fraudulently obtained and 

 the right to recover such lands had long since ceased by 

 reason of statutes of limitation. We all know that nature 

 has her statutes of limitation; the disappearance of the pas- 

 senger pigeon is a striking illustration of this. Only a 

 generation ago, pigeons existed in countless millions. I 

 am sure that they were adaptable to domestication and cul- 

 tivation, and I believe that they might have been saved had 

 the work of cultivation been taken up in time. Let us take 

 another viewpoint in order ko get at the real value of our 

 forests and forest life. 



I have been told today by Mr. Brackett, the commissioner 

 of Maine, that the outing business in his state amounts to 

 more than $20,000,000 per year, that is, the money spent 

 by the people who go into the woods, the fishermen, hunters, 

 and tourists. There is no commercial fishing permitted in 

 the inland waters of Maine, therefore no part of the 

 $23,000,000 worth of food fishes before mentioned comes 

 from these waters of Maine or, in fact, from any of the 

 inland waters of the New England States, because com- 

 mercial fishing is not permitted there, and the river fisheries 

 which once produced shad and salmon in great quantities 

 are now, comparatively speaking, valueless, owing largely 

 to excessive stream pollution and deforestation. 



