28 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



the small, thrifty poles for ties and mine props, and then 

 accidentally burning the slash and converting the former 

 forest into an addition to the great Arizona desert, will 

 cut only the mature yellow pine with a few of the 







GROUP OF YOUNG PINES WHICH SPRUNG UP UNDER 

 THE PARTIAL SHADE OF A DYiNG VETERAN 



This illustrates the natural sequence of age classes in the vir- 

 gin forest. Groups of various ages are shown in the background. 

 Coconino National Forest. 



younger black jacks, where they are too crowded. The 

 trees will be felled away from young timber, the tops 

 lopped, piled and burned at a st-fe period. The young 

 trees, released, will spring into rapid growth, while abun- 

 dant seeding will take place from the trees left standing, 

 and the openings will soon be filled with a fine crop of 

 seedlings. 



It will take twenty years to cut the timber on this sale 

 area. There is at least four times as much timber on the 

 remainder of the Sitgreaves Forest, not reached by this 

 sale, which will be held in reserve, and will furnish an 

 equal annual cut for the next hundred years. By that 

 time the black jacks left in the first sale will be ready to 

 cut, and the yield of timber from this forest will thus be 

 made perpetual. 



This timber sale means, first, prosperity and railroad 

 transportation for an otherwise hopelessly isolated dis- 



trict ; second, a great increase in the supply of our timber 

 products, estimated to amount to over thirty million feet 

 per year ; which would, if left in its natural state, continue 

 to rot and disappear as it has for countless ages past; 

 third, the opening up to the tourist and man of moderate 

 means of a beautiful mountain region with a cool sum- 

 mer climate, real scenery, and room enough to accommo- 

 date all comers. No better illustration could be shown 

 of the ideals of public administration towards which the 

 pioneers of the Forest Service were constantly striving 

 and which now, throughout the length and breadth of 

 the west are rapidly bearing fruit. 



WAR ON GUNNERS 



BY ALFRED GASKILL, STATE FORESTER 



T N the fall of 1916 the Forest Fire Service of New Jer- 

 -* sey apprehended 136 deer hunters who had made fires 

 in the woods in violation of the law. This year after 

 giving wide publicity to its intention, the Fire Service 

 detailed a number of wardens to patrol the forest sections 

 to which deer hunters resort on the nights preceding the 

 four Wednesdays on which the pursuit of deer is legal. 

 Though the weather was cold and wet only two illegal 

 fires were found. More hunters than usual were out, but 

 most of them arrived on the ground by automobile at 

 about daybreak. Those who came earlier brought oil 

 stoves or fire buckets. 



When the small game season opened parts of the state 

 were very dry ; these gunners scatter so widely that an 

 effective patrol is impossible and an unusual number of 

 fires occurred. Though it is not the practice of small 

 game hunters to build camp fires they do smoke and 

 through their carelessness in this way, and sometimes by 

 the use of fire to uncover the game, the woods and fields 

 are burned. 



The Department of Conservation and Development of 

 New Jersey, following its predecessor the Forest Com- 

 mission, has declared its belief that there is not room in 

 the state for forestry, for intensive farming, and for free 

 hunting, and has renewed the recommendation made 

 three years ago that all protection be removed from 

 deer and rabbits as the animals which attract most gun- 

 ners from the cities. The department's position has been 

 greatly strengthened by many complaints from farmers 

 that their crops have been injured or destroyed by these 

 animals. As one sufferer put it, "We feed the things all 

 the year, but dare not shoot them except in the open 

 season, and then have no more rights in our own woods 

 and fields than the sports who come from the cities and 

 overrun us." 



The ground taken is radical but is fully justified as a 

 measure of conservation and of justice to the land 

 owners. 



TN ANCIENT times Greece possessed about seven and a 

 * half million of acres of dense forest, and she was com- 

 paratively rich in timber until about fifty years ago. 

 Much of it has, however, now disappeared. Public 

 Ledger. 



