THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



I3 : 6 — SEi'T., 1907 



forests the cedar will have to be given a better chance instead of being con- 

 sidered, as now, a negligible quantity in its younger stages, and many of the 

 forest-grown trees which are now cut for fence posts can profitably be left to 

 attain their full development and thus become available for pencil wood. 

 \Press Bulletin y Forest Service J\ 



Changing Names of Animals. With reference to the tendency to 

 substitute older for well-known scientific names of certain plants and animals. 

 Professor Kingsley, of Tuft's College, writes in Science the following inter- 

 esting sentences : ** Names of animals and plants are but means for easy 

 reference ; nomenclature is not the end and object of all biological science. 

 * * * The safest plan for the morphologist or the ecologist is to 

 stick to the well-accepted, time- honored names and to utterly ignore the 

 vagaries of the nominalist." 



Timber Supply. Every person in the United States is using over six 

 times as much wood as he would use if he were in Europe. The country 

 as a whole consumes every year between three and four times more wood 

 than all of the forests of the United States grow in the meantime. The 

 average acre of forest lays up a store of only 10 cubic feet annually, where- 

 as it ought to be laying up at least 30 cubic feet in order to furnish the products 

 taken out of it. Since 1880 more than 700 billion feet of timber have been 

 cut for lumber alone These are some of the remarkable statements made 

 in Circular 97 of the Forest Service. A study of the circular must lead 

 directly to the conclusion that the rate at which forests products in the United 

 States have been and are being consumed is far too lavish, and that only one 

 result can follow unless steps are promptly taken to prevent waste in use and 

 to increase the growth rate of every acre of forest in the United States. 

 This result is a timber famine. 



Destruction of Deer by Wolves. Timber wolves have become so 

 numerous and destructive to game in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and 

 in extreme northern Wisconsin and Minnesota as to threaten to exterminate 

 the deer. Deer are found in considerable numbers in the swamps and dense 

 timber, where, during the time of deep snow, they had gathered into well- 

 beaten yards, often a hundred or more in a yard. Within the yards and 

 along the trails food was abundant, and the deer would have wintered in good 

 condition if unmolested, but while the snow was soft they were entirely a^ 

 the mercy of the wolves. — \_Dept, Agr. Circular.']^ 



Danger in Cattle from India. An importation of zebu or Brahman 

 cattle from India made last year showed that there is danger of the disease 



