try by providing encouragement and aid for the mountain 

 people in using the resources of the region to best advantage. 

 The nation is getting, from this acquisition of national forests 

 in the East, the added advantage of a large and important re- 

 gion turned to its natural use and made permanently pro- 

 ductive, while the protection of watersheds will, in a large 

 measure, produce immunity from both flood and low water in 

 a vast section of the country. 



From the appropriation for 1914, there is an estimated bal- 

 ance of nearly $96,000 remaining, which, with what remains of 

 the $2,000,000 appropriated for the fiscal year 1915, is still 

 available for additional purchases. 



TREE CUTTING UP-TO-DATE. 



For some time is has been known that a wire drawn tight 

 and heated by an electric current red hot would cut its way 

 through a thick tree. Mr. Hugo Gautke, a German inventor, 

 has improved this process by causing the wire to become in- 

 candescent simply by friction in working its way through a 

 tree. A steel wire one twenty-fifth of an inch in diameter is 

 used, and it is said that this can be made to traverse a tree 

 twenty inches in diameter in six minutes. The wire is worked 

 to and fro rapidly by an electric motor and becomes so hot by 

 friction that it burns its way quickly through the trunk. The 

 wire will cut through the tree without the use of wedges to 

 keep the cut open, and the cut may be made several feet up 

 the tree, on the ground level, or even below the ground. The 

 electricity may be brought to the forest from a distance by a 

 cable; a gasoline motor of 10 horse power and a dynamo are 

 all that is required to use this process. It is contended that 

 the great trees, ten feet thick in the forest on the west coast, 

 can thus be felled with ease. 



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