those States, circulars containing succinct expressive lessons 

 on the fire danger, luridly illustrated with pitcures of forest 

 fires and this example was followed in Pennsylvania in 1912 

 by the issuance and distribution among the 1,000,000 or more 

 public school, and parochial school children of the state of a 

 fire circular prepared and published jointly by the Pennsyl- 

 vania Forestry Association, the Pennsylvania Conservation 

 Association, the Philadelphia Commercial Museum and Lehigh 

 University. This circular has been copied and issued in 

 Massachusetts by the Massachusetts Forestry Association and 

 distributed among the 450,000 public school children of that 

 state, and also in North Carolina by the North Carolina For- 

 estry Association and such issue is contemplated in other 

 states the importance of impressing on school children 

 throughout the country the danger and the useless and great 

 loss resulting from woodland fires being widely felt. A 

 burned building can be comparatively soon rebuilt, but it 

 requires a great many years to grow a forest. When- fire runs 

 through the woods practically all the young trees are killed 

 and most of the olders ones are greatly injured or destroyed 

 and so also are all the live seeds and nuts on and in the 

 ground, all the laurel .and berry plants, and the humus or 

 mould soil which holds the stored water from the rainfall and 

 from which our springs, creeks and rivers are kept flowing 

 through the summer and in^times of drought. 



These views are trite and well known to foresters, but we 

 are meeting here to talk to and confer with the public, with 

 many men and women who feel interested in the forestry 

 question and are seeking elementary information and to them 

 it is well to say in regard also to the other important ques- 

 tion, Unwise Taxation remember that a farmer growing 

 grain may annually harvest and sell his crop and have where- 

 with to pay his taxes, but the timber grower raises a crop 

 that does not mature for 30 or 40 or 50 years, or more, and 

 the taxes should be adjusted so as to bear on the yield when 

 it comes with the cutting of the timber and not be assessed 

 and made payable annually, for the owner will cut and sell 

 his timber to avoid the annual tax on a crop giving no annual 

 return. 



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