THE SUMMER MEETING OF EASTERN FORESTERS 



By HTjriH P. BAKER. 



ON July fourteenth aud fifteen tb, the Association of Eastern Foresters 

 held a succes.sful meetinp; in northern New York witli headquarters at 

 Sarauac Lake. This is tlie first time that the oroanization has held a 

 meetino; in which others than those connected immediately with state work 

 were included. Feeling that the society could not only broaden its sphere of 

 action and influence, but greatly strengthen and increase the usefulness of its 

 work, the state foresters decided to include practicing foresters in all other 

 lines in the eastern states. This brought in for the first time this year a 

 number of men from various forest schools and several foresters in the eray)loy 

 of large corporations and in private work. 



The day previous to the meeting the writer, with a member of the North- 

 eastern Foi-estry Company, had the good fortune to jog along slowly up the 

 western shore of Champlain. stopping at one or two small nurseries operated 

 by this company, and at Willsboro looked over their new seed houses built 

 last year. These houses are very complete indeed and probably the best of 

 their kind in America. The large house shown in the accompanying illus- 

 tration has a capacity of six thousand bushels of cones. These are spread 

 out on racks made of lath, which are light and easily adjustable, extending 

 in tiers from the floor to the ceiling. The small house is fifteen by thirty and 

 is occupied by the ovens in which the cones are heated after removal from 

 the larger dry house. The method used for the removal of wings from seed 

 is not an entirely practical one, because of the amount of hand work involved 

 and the problem of developing cheaper and quicker methods is a little difficult 

 to solve because of the size of the plant. The Appel concern in Darmstadt 

 having very much more extensive ovens has developed machinery which does 

 the work satisfactorily, though they figure on some loss from crushing and 

 mangling of the seed. 



After leaving Willsboro we stopped for a few hours at Bluff Point, where 

 Mr. H. S. Bristol, forester for the Delaware & Hudson Railroad, is developing 

 an extensive forest nursery. This nursery is excellently laid out and has 

 an effective water system, but the extremely sandy nature of the soil rather 

 leads one to feel that we are sacrificing in this country certain important 

 conditions in the nursery to get a soil that is easily worked and warm. 

 When a season is as hot and dry as the past one, nurseries located in such 

 situations are sure to suffer and the matter of supplying proper amounts of 

 plant food in the soil is an extremely important question which is probably 

 solved easier by the railroad than by others in nursery work in the east, 

 because of cheap and easy transportation. 



At Plattsburg the party of three was increased by several from across 

 the lake, and the next morning a veiy interesting run was made into the thick 

 of the Adirondacks to a little station beyond Saranac Lake, where the entire 

 party of eighteen foresters began a series of unusually atti-active excursions 

 under guidance of Mr. C R. Pettis, superintendent of state forests, and his 



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