GREAT TEACHER OF FORESTRY RETIRES 



BY FILIBERT ROTH 



DEAN OF FORESTRY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 



PROFESSOR B. E. FERNOW, having passed the 

 retiring age, has resigned as Dean of the Forest 

 School of Toronto University with the title of Pro- 

 fessor Emeritus. The Nestor of foresters in America 

 has thus relinquished active service. Our masterbuilder 

 in forestry has laid down his pencil and square. 



For over forty years Fernow has worked uninter- 

 ruptedly to bring forestry into our American woods; to 

 further the science of for- 

 estry; to develop right leg- 

 islation with regard to for- 

 estry as a basic industry, 

 and last, but not least, to 

 prepare men for a profes- 

 sion whose task is to build 

 up and care for the forests 

 of North America. 



With thorough schooling ; 

 with forest training at 

 Hanover-Munden, under 

 the famous Heyer and 

 others ; with experience 

 as regular forester, Fer- 

 now came to this coun- 

 try in 1876, a young 

 man of fine presence, an 

 athlete, scholar, enthusiast ; 

 able to see things clearly 

 and in large lines ; able to 

 state the case convincingly 

 and able to pick out the 

 things to do, the things of 

 importance and of real 

 value to the great move- 

 ment in forestry. During 

 the years 1878-1885, he had 

 charge of 15,000 acres of 

 hardwoods in Pennsylvania, 

 supplying the charcoal-iron 

 works of Cooper-Hewitt 

 Company, and other fur- 

 naces. While thus engaged 



in one of the pioneer efforts in the practice of forestry 

 in the United States he found time to write on forestry 

 for Birkenbine's Journal of Charcoal Iron Workers. 

 During the early years of this period, being located 

 in New York, he took an active part in starting the 

 forestry movement in that State, and in 1885 formu- 

 lated for Senator Lowe the legislation which established 

 the forest reserve in the Adirondacks and the State 

 Forestry Commission, embodying in that legislation also 

 the first forest fire warden organization. 



In 1882 he assisted in the forming of the American 

 Forestry Association at Cincinnati and Montreal, and 



DR. BERNARD EDWARD FERNOW 



for fifteen years acted as Secretary and Chairman of the 

 Executive Committee of this Association. The Associa- 

 tion being short of funds in the earlier years he pub- 

 lished, as a private venture, several bulletins on for- 

 estry, and from 1885 to 1898 he was editor of the 

 Proceedings of the Forestry Association, and of its 

 journal, under the title The Forester. To this task of 

 secretary-chairman-editor he devoted much time and 



effort, directing the work of 

 the Association along defi- 

 nite, well-planned lines, and 

 thus enabling the Associa- 

 tion, in spite of its insig- 

 nificant numerical and 

 financial strength, and in 

 spite of its composition, in 

 which timber owners and 

 representatives of the 

 wood-using industries were 

 almost lacking, to accom- 

 plish most astonishing re- 

 sults. The most notable 

 of these was the greatest 

 piece of forest legislation 

 so far adopted in our coun- 

 try, the law of 1891, au- 

 thorizing the President of 

 the United States to estab- 

 lish National Forest Re- 

 serves. 



This great act which led 

 to the creation of our pres- 

 ent-day "National Forests," 

 and saved to our people 

 an area of forests greater 

 than the combined forest 

 areas of France, Germany 

 and Austria was primarily 

 due to the work of three 

 men whose names should 

 and will live in the history 

 of our nation : Dr. Fernow, 

 Edward A. Bowers, at one time Assistant Commis-. 

 sioner of the Land Office, and Secretary of the Interior 

 Noble, one of our real statesmen who appreciated the 

 importance of the enterprise and was convinced by the 

 clear and concise statement made by Dr. Fernow as the 

 spokesman of a little group of members of the American 

 Forestry Association. 



Dr. Fernow's great work for the nation really began 

 in 1886, when he accepted the position of organizer and 

 director of the forestry work of the government in the , 

 Department of Agriculture, a position which he occupied 

 until 1898. At that time lumbering was in its glory ; there 



