276 



NATURE 



[January 19, 1893 



fifteen years before a timber famine must occur, which 

 will greatly enhance the value of European forests. 



Brandis explains the present lamentable state of 

 affairs in the United States, as follows : — The Timber 

 Culture Act, which was in force in certain of the States, 

 provided that settlers should plant up with trees one 

 quarter of the area allotted to them, and it was thus 

 hoped to obtain forests in the treeless regions between 

 the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi river. Large 

 tracts of land have been occupied under this Act, but 

 very little progress has been made in afforestation. It 

 is not difficult in the Republic for people to neglect 

 engagements they have made with the State. It has been 

 recognized for some time past that this law has been 

 practically of little use, and it was therefore abrogated in 

 March, 1891. The law abrogating it, in section 24, 

 empowered the President to demarcate and reserve certain 

 tracts of State forest. Great hopes were therefore enter- 

 tained, and soon afterwards a proclamation was issued 

 largely extending the Yellowstone Park, in Montana, on 

 the borders of Canada. 



This measure had been strongly supported for some 

 time past by the American Forestry Association. The 

 Park is a mountain forest tract on the water-parting 

 between the Rivers Columbia and Missouri, and its pre- 

 servation and proper management is of immense import- 

 ance. In October, 1891, the extensive forest tract in 

 Colorado in the Rocky Mountains, in which several large 

 tributaries of the Colorado river have their rise, and con- 

 taining 1,365,000 acres, was proclaimed as the White 

 River Forest Reserve. It was also expected that a portion 

 of the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, bordering on 

 the Yosemite National Park, and other localities where 

 the Sequoia gigantea flourishes, would be proclaimed as 

 State reserves. These two national parks were previously 

 reserved under older laws. The numerous intelligent 

 friends of forestry in America confidently expected that 

 a beginning would now be made in the demarcation of 

 extensive State forest reserves, and in their scientific 

 management. 



The most recent news from America, however, has 

 thoroughly upset these expectations. A Bill has been 

 introduced into Congress, to hand over most of the 

 Yellowstone forest reserve to a railway company. It is 

 considered certain that this Bill will pass the Lower 

 House, and it is not expected that the Senate will refuse 

 to sanction it. Wood merchants, mining speculators, 

 and sheep owners are vigorously agitating against the 

 proposed reserve in the Sierra Nevada, and it is feared 

 that their agitation will carry the day. 



The American Forestry Association, which held its 

 tenth annual meeting last January, has " memorialized "the 

 President that instead of making a few reserves here and 

 there, he should proclaim the reservation of all State 

 forests still left to the Union, and arrange for their proper 

 management. Friends of the forest are numerous in 

 America, and insight into the essential necessity of forest 

 protection is spreading, owing to the numbers of Amer- 

 icans who travel in Europe, but in a land where the 

 dollar rules, and where an individual who will not recog- 

 nize its authority is considered a fool, any steady progress 

 towards State forest management cannot be expected. 



Bernhard Fernow, the chief of the Forestry Branch of 

 the Ministry of Agriculture at Washington, still hopes for 

 action in this direction on the part of Congress and 

 the State Executive. At the last meeting of the Forestry 

 Association he rightly urged that aesthetic and senti- 

 mental grounds for improving American forests must be 

 left entirely in the background. Only where important 

 material interests are concerned, such as securing a con- 

 tinuous supply of wood, or a supply of water, or climatic 

 considerations, should the State limit the freedom of its 

 citizens in dealing with forests. If, however, for urgent 

 reasons of public utility, it should be necessary to reserve 



NO. I 2 12, VOL. 47I 



a forest, the State should not be contented with merely 

 demarcating and protecting it, but should introduce 

 scientific management, so that the neighbouring popula- 

 tions may be able to utilize the forest produce ; and in any 

 case, all pre-existing rights acquired by the people in the 

 forests should be strictly protected. Fernow concludes 

 with the strongly-expressed advice that a law should be 

 passed reserving the relics of the forests of the Union, and 

 preventing any fresh alienations. He firmly believes that 

 such a law is most urgently required. It is, however, 

 quite a different matter for Congress to pass any such 

 law, though more may perhaps be expected from the 

 separate States in the Union, and in those of New York 

 and California some rather halting steps have been taken 

 in the right direction. 



As matters stand at present in the United States, it is 

 pretty obvious that a time will come when landowners 

 will look upon their private forests as a good investment, 

 for prices of wood and other forest produce are steadily 

 rising. Little progress has, however, yet been made in 

 this direction, and recent attempts made by some rich 

 men to manage their forests properly with advantage 

 have failed. 



Sir Dietrich Brandis then turns to the progress made in 

 the study of American forest trees, and states that 

 literature on the subject is pretty abundant, but is after 

 all merely thrashing straw. What is wanted in America 

 is a practical proof that in forests of the Weymouth 

 pine, of Minnesota, or of Californian red wood, or of 

 Douglas fir in Washington and Oregon, or in the splendid 

 mixed broad-leaved forests of the Alleghany mountains, 

 good forest management will prove more remunerative 

 than wasteful pillage {Raudbau). 



The remainder of Brandis's paper is chiefly of botanical 

 interest, and greatly praises Sargent's magnificent work. 

 One other passage is too interesting to be omitted. It 

 refers to the mesquit tree, Prosopis jidiflora, which be- 

 longs to the dry zone in the south-west of the United 

 States, and is also found in Mexico, and in the Andes as 

 far as Chili and Argentina. In the river valleys of Arizona, 

 where, although the air is dry, yet subsoil water is near 

 the surface of the ground, this species forms extensive 

 forests. On drier soils the aerial parts of the tree are 

 reduced, but the root system is greatly extended. Sergent 

 states that while the stem may be only a few inches high, 

 and may only bear a few leaves, yet the tap root goes 

 straight down to the subsoil water, and the aerial growth of 

 the tree furnishes a clear indication of the depth at which 

 the latter may be found. 



Wherever the mesquit is a tree the subsoil water is 

 forty to fifty feet down, where it is a small shrub it is 

 from fifty to sixty feet down, and wherever the roots de- 

 scend over sixty feet, the plant is not more than two or 

 three feet high. In the scantily-wooded districts, where 

 the mesquit tree grows, its roots yield most of the fire- 

 wood, and are dug up, or dragged by oxen from the 

 ground. Prosopis spicigera in the drier parts of India 

 similarly furnishes fuel and cattle fodder in the Punjab, 

 Sindh, and parts of Berar. This tree, there termed the 

 Jhand, sends down its roots to a depth of fifty feet and 

 more, to the subsoil water, and thus produces wood in 

 a dry country, providing the peasant with fuel and wood 

 for his plough. W. R. Fisher. 



JOHN STRONG NEWBERRY. 



T T is not only in the United States that the death of 

 J- this veteran of scientific research will bring wide- 

 spread regret. To many geologists and palaeontologists 

 in this country and on the Continent he was personally 

 known, and those whom he honoured with his friendship 

 will feel keenly the loss they now sustain. He was born 

 at New Windsor, Connecticut, on December 22, 1822, 



