48 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Idaho the same region which suffered most severely in 

 1910. In Oregon and Washington the danger was not 

 much less, but the fires on the National Forests were 

 less extensive. Late in August the emergency expendi- 

 tures for fire fighting in district 1 were for a time about 

 $15,000 a day. Before the fall rains brought the fire 

 season in the Northwest to a close the emergency outlay 

 since the beginning of the current fiscal year had reached 

 a total of over $950,000. 



Reforestation on the National Forests involved the 

 planting and sowing of 7,681 acres. 



Grazing permits for cattle were for 1,953,198 head, as 

 compared with 1,758,764 for the previous year, an in- 

 crease of 11 per cent. For sheep the permits were 7,586,- 

 034, against 7,843,305 for 1916, a decrease of 3 per cent. 

 In spite of this apparent decrease in the number of sheep 

 it is stated that probably 200,000 more sheep were grazed 

 than in 1916, as all fees had not been paid at the close of 

 the fiscal year. 



The net total of water-power permits increased during 

 the year by 31, of which 21 were for transmission lines 

 only. 



ARMENIA AS SEEN BY AN AMERICAN FORESTER 



AMERICAN foresters have a knack of getting into 

 the thick of things. Whether in their native woods, 

 in the Forest Regiments in the French war zone. 

 or in other forms of service they are strong for action. 

 Typical of this spirit is a letter just received by Raphael 

 Zon, chief of forest investigations in the United States 

 Forest Service, from Edward C. M. Richards at Urumia, 

 Persia, a member of the American Forestry Association. 

 Mr. Richards is an American forester of established 

 reputation. He is a graduate of the Yale Forest School 

 and was until recently a consulting forester in New 

 York. He is now a volunteer worker of the Armenian 

 Relief Association. His letter is a human document of 

 much interest, as shown by the following extracts : 



"The people out here grow Lombardy poplar as a tim- 

 ber tree. Little groves of it or now and then fair-sized 

 patches is the nearest they come to forests. Most of it 

 is grown in long rows along irrigation ditches. They 

 trim it off along the trunk so that it develops into a very 

 tall, thin tree. They use these poles as rafters, etc., in 

 their mud houses. The really great need here is fuel 

 wood. The people use manure cakes in their fires almost 

 entirely, as only the wealthy can afford wood to burn. 

 Twenty dollars (about) was the price I heard quot- 

 ed for one cord. Except along the few river beds 

 where willows, wild olive, and as far as I have seen, 

 nothing else grow, this is a treeless country. In fact, the 

 location of the villages is noticed by the presence of 

 trees, which are on irrigated soil. My belief is that this 

 is due to lack of enough water or to poor distribution 

 of rainfall. 



"Now, to get down to what can be tried out here. I 

 have some Western yellow pine seed, and some Douglas 

 fir. But it strikes me that some of the real desert trees of 

 America, such as the mesquite, the Palo Verde, and espe- 

 cially the eucalyptus, might do well here. Also I am anx- 

 ious to try out some of the dry site conifers such as the 

 jack pine, all four of the nut pines, and any other extreme 

 drought resisting species. It also seems to me that the 

 ailanthus should do well on some sites here and make a 

 welcome shade tree. Then the thought comes to me 

 that there may be a number of Australian species which 

 might fit and perhaps the Aleppo Pine, Pinus halpensis 



Mill, might be worth trying out. And are there not some 

 very hardy species that grow on the dry veldt in Africa 

 and on the plains of the Argentine? As to the irrigated 

 tracts it seems to me that there are better species than 

 the Lombardy poplar. How about the American cotton- 

 wood? Could you send me a few cuttings or some seed 

 to experiment with? 



"I am writing this, and in fact we are all acting in our 

 work, as if it was a sure thing that nothing in the way of 

 another invasion of this district by the Turks and Kurds 

 was going to take place. In reality we are always living 

 on a powder mine here. There are some fifteen thou- 

 sand refugees in Urumia and all around us thousands 

 more. Three thousand fresh ones came in a little south 

 of here about two weeks ago. Many of them were really 

 almost naked and the poverty, famine, want and horror 

 of it all make your heart ache. I am glad I came out to 

 do what I could. This winter is going to be the worst 

 that ever struck this region. Just at present it is summer 

 and so warm that the poor people do not need clothes 

 much. Also they manage to scrape up enough to keep 

 alive, but when the cold starts in there will be the most 

 terrible want that you can think of. I assure you that 

 when you have a small mob of 50 Gilu, Kurdish and 

 Syrian men, women and little children pressing around 

 you, filthy, dirty, covered with sores, haggard and gaunt 

 and all of them crying out for anything at all to eat. it 

 makes you feel pretty hard toward the plenty of the 

 United States and the way they are not making use of it. 

 Why, one night's expenditures on wine, women and song 

 along Broadway would save the lives of whole nations 

 out here. I thought that I had seen some of the poorest 

 people alive when I saw some of the poor people of the 

 New York slums and the poor whites of the South, but 

 they are bloated bondholders compared to these refugees. 



"Aside from the refugee part of this country, the mix- 

 ture of races is a fright. In five minutes you see Ameri- 

 cans, Russians, Kurds, Aremenians, Syrians, Gelus (Nes- 

 torians or Assyrians), Mongolians and Persians. And the 

 mixture of language, thought and beliefs is even worse 

 than the mixture of races. One is often thrown with peo- 

 ple who can speak with everyone they meet ! And to 

 speak three or four tongues is nothing at all ! There is 



