1900. 



AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 



271 



vent freshets and drying up of streams 

 when we know such to be the facts. It is 

 extremely unfortunate "to know a great 

 deal that is not so." I dislike to have to 

 unlearn so much as I have had to even 

 from official reports. 



One of the great difficulties in getting 

 land holders to plant the seed of timber trees 

 is the fact that so much of the cheap land 

 is covered with Grey Birch, Alders, Red 

 Cherry and other weed trees. Last \veek 

 I looked over four unoccupied adjoining 

 farms on a highway, only five or six miles 

 from a large village and two miles from a 

 railroad station, all excellent land for 

 White Pine and Oak, but they were largely 

 covered with young trees nearly all of 

 worthless kinds. These with their two 

 quite good sets of buildings could be 

 bought, I presume, for about two dollars 

 per acre. One of them containing three 



hundred acres with quite good buildings 

 had been offered for five hundred dollars. It 

 is worth much more than this to grow Pine 

 and other timber but for the bushes. The 

 great fact is stated in your October num- 

 ber on page 249 as a quotation from 77/c 

 Lrimberman's Review, It "is a demon- 

 strable fact that by treating the tree as a 

 crop, planting it under proper conditions 

 and harvesting" at proper time, "a per- 

 manent and adequate return from the in- 

 vestment may be secured and the integrity 

 of the forest preserved." This is a vastly 

 important fact yet in little New Hampshire 

 the United States Census Report of 1880 

 says that there are 116,000 acres of land 

 lying idle, producing neither farm or forest 

 crop. O, the neglected opportunities ! 



J. D. LYMAN. 



EXETER, N. H., Oct. 24, 1900. 



NEWS, NOTES AND COMMENT. 



The following letter from 

 From the Hon. t i TT W a vne MacVea-h 

 Wayne MacVeagh u vv d y n 



to the Secretary of Agricul- 

 ture, explains itself : 



WASHINGTON, D. C., Sept. 18, 1900. 



DEAR MR. SECRETARY : I have received 

 a notice from Mr. Newell stating that you 

 had suggested my name as one likely to 

 be interested in the work of the Forestry 

 Association, and suggesting my becoming 

 a member of it. I therefore take the 

 liberty of sending the enclosed check for 

 life membership through you to Mr. 

 Newell, as it gives me an opportunity of 

 saying to you that I appreciate the great 

 value of the movement in this country for 

 the preservation of what forests are left us 

 and for the renewing of those which have 

 been unwisely destroyed. I know of 

 hardly any work likely to be more fruitful 

 of advantage to the future of our country. 

 Sincerely yours, 



WAYNE MACVEAGH. 



HON. JAMES WILSON. 



The New Ciow 

 Creek Forest 

 Reserve. 



On the roth of October 

 President McKinley signed 

 a proclamation setting apart 

 a new national forest reserve in Wyoming 

 to be known as the Crow Creek Forest 

 Reserve. 



This reserve contains 56,320 acres, or 

 about two and one-half townships, and is 

 situated in Albany County at the head of 

 the stream from which the reserve takes its 

 name. Crow Creek, of which the upper 

 drainage basin is thus reserved, is the prin- 

 cipal source of water supply to Fort D. A. 

 Russell and to the city of Cheyenne, 

 also supplies water for irrigating purposes 

 to a number of ranches but only to a 

 limited extent, for at present it is neces- 

 sary in summer time to close the irrigating 

 ditches in order that the suppl\ t'or the 

 city of Cheyenne may not run short. 



The Crow Creek Forest Reserve is about 

 8, ooo feet above sea le\el. The land which 

 it contains is poor and almost everywhere 

 quite unfit for agriculture. Only about 

 two and one-half of the eighty-eight see- 



