20 



THE FORESTER. 



January, 



14. Influence of taxes on Business 

 Forestry : As before. 



15. A National Park Problem (Min- 

 nesota) : After personal investigations in 

 Northern Minnesota and conversations with 

 several Minnesota lumbermen. 



] 6. State Loans for Forestry Purposes 

 (Pennsylvania) : Using data which actually 

 refer to property well-known to me. 



1 7. Weeding and Road-Building : After 

 Pinchot, Graves, and personal experience. 



In conclusion I beg to say that none of 

 the lumber papers reviewing my booklet 

 has found my premises inconsistent with 

 the facts prevailing in the world of lumber 



regions. 



Very respectfully, 



C. A. Schenck. 



[We see nothing in Dr. Schenck's state- 

 ment of his sources of information to 

 change our belief that many of his prob- 

 lems are based on premises which are so far 



from representing the real condition of 

 things that there remains little to the prob- 

 lems except arithmetic. The North West- 

 ern Lumberman may have recorded the 

 selling of Red Fir for forty cents an acre 

 more than once. But this does not war- 

 rant the assumption that 100,000 acres of 

 "splendid Douglas Fir" could recently 

 have been bought for any such price even in 

 the backwoods of Oregon. As for the ex- 

 amples which are based on Dr. Schenck's 

 own investigations, we can only point out 

 that the fact that the investigations are Dr. 

 Schenck's does not exempt his employ- 

 ment of their results from criticism. What 

 we said of the fourth problem in the 

 November Forester was " generaliza- 

 tions like those made on page 10 would 

 be unsafe even if based on thousands of 

 measurements." One of the most impor- 

 tant tables in Our Telloxv Poplar is based 

 on stem analyses of only twenty trees. 

 Ed.] 



NEWS, NOTES, AND COMMENT. 



Land given to Under the terms of the 

 State Board of law, entitled, " An act to 

 Forestry. encourage the growing 



and preservation of for- 

 ests, and to create forest boards and forest 

 reserves, and to appropriate money there- 

 fore," ex-Governor John S. Pillsbury, of 

 Minnesota, has presented the State Board 

 of Forestry with the title to 1,000 acres of 

 cut-over land in Cass County. The only 

 condition which limits the use of this land 

 is that the University of Minnesota shall 

 be made the beneficiary of two-thirds of 

 all the income which may be derived from 

 it. This is the first time that the law pro- 

 viding for such donations to the State, 

 passed by the State Legislature of 1S99, 

 has been taken advantage of. In his letter 

 to forest boards ex-governor Pillsbury 

 "reserved the right to add to this gift 

 other hinds from time to time, whenever 

 he may see fit, all additions to be con- 

 sidered as one gift." 



" Worthless In the Michigan Trades- 



Land" and For- man (Grand Rapids) for 

 est Destruction. December 1 2th appeared 

 an article by F. E. Skeels 

 entitled " The Forestry Problem : Its Solu- 

 tion from a Forestry Standpoint." In the 

 course of this article Mr. Skeels said : 



" In the General Tax Law of 1893 cer- 

 tain provisions are made by which the 

 Auditor General was to deed to the State 

 certain lands, which then became subject 

 to entry as tax homesteads. There is one 

 clause of this law that has created much 

 comment and no little censure : Without 

 giving more of the Act than is necessary to 

 explain this feature, we find, in Section 

 127 : 'It becomes the duty of the Auditor 

 General and Commissioner of the State 

 Land Office, to cause an examination of 

 lands delinquent for taxes in certain town- 

 ships, and if it shall appear that said lands 

 are barren, swamp or worthless lands and 

 have been abandoned by the owner, then 







