vl PRACTICAL FORESTRY 
are original. As far as the writer knows, no author 
in English, or in fact in any language, has presented 
the subject in the following arrangement and in such 
untechnical and popular yet accurate form. For- 
estry, when shorn of pedantry, simplified, and di- 
vested of technical details of little importance at 
present to the American, falls readily into place by 
the side of the cognate arts of horticulture and agri- 
culture. The tendency on the part of European 
writers has been to amplify and extend the subject 
to the exhaustion of the merest detail, necessitating 
a long search through an immense amount of unim- 
portant and uninteresting matter in order to find the 
points of most importance. In fact, the science and 
art of forestry have been much encumbered with un- 
necessary mathematics. “ Mathematics must be the 
servant and not the mistress of silviculture.” The 
Europeans have produced a very complex and diffi- 
cult science out of one which is so simple that any 
man of ordinary intelligence may comprehend it. 
Progress in this country is founded upon public 
opinion. Public opinion is dependent upon the de- 
gree of intelligence and educational advantages of 
the general public. The best way to educate people 
in a subject of this kind is to supply them with re- 
able literature written in plain language and avail- 
able at a reasonable price. The neglect of our forests 
