20 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION. 



Januar}^ 



matter whether their operations were 

 carried on economically or not. They 

 have continued in certain wa}'s partly 

 because they were the old ways and also 

 largely because the efforts to change 

 their methods have been based mainly 

 on chemical analyses in the office and on 

 the general conception of what might 

 be possible, instead of on actual experi- 

 mentation in the field. Now, the Bureau 

 of Forestr}^ hopes, with the cooperation 

 of the operators themselves (which, I am 

 \'ery glad to say, has already been se- 

 cured on a large scale), to assist them 

 to use methods that will save that in- 

 dustry to the South. 



The chemical uses of wood is another 

 great field just opening out. 



Then the need of forestr}' in the 

 Philippines will occur to 3'ou, and there 

 is work urgently needed in Porto Rico. 

 But in the Philippines especially, with 

 their 40,000,000 acres of forest, there is 

 a field for foresters which will develop, 

 as I think, one of the best systems and 

 one of the most useful bits of forest work 

 that we shall see for many a long day. 



I received the other day a copy of a 

 Houston (Texas) paper, containing 

 an account of a banquet given to Mr. 

 John H. Kirby, who has organized the 

 Kirby I^umber Company and the Hous- 

 ton Oil Company. Together they con- 

 trol a million acres of longleaf pine tim- 

 ber in Texas. The Bureau of Forestry 

 is to make a working plan for conser\' a- 

 tive forestry on all this land. This is 

 one of the most important pieces of pri- 

 vate work the Bureau of Forestry has 

 before it. The people who were at the 

 banquet listened to addresses from a 

 number of prominent lumbermen, and 

 especially from a number of the editors 

 of lumber papers, and it was with the 

 keenest delight that I read the uniformly 

 favorable comments of the men who con- 

 trol the lumber press on Mr. Kirby 's 

 undertaking. 



Interest in forestry is waking up all 

 over the South. We have, in addition 

 to this Texas work, 50,000 acres of 

 lyongleaf Pine to be taken up in South 

 Carolina, 1 6,000 acres of hardwoods near 

 Grandfather Mountain, in North Caro- 

 lina; 62,000 acres of pine in Georgia, 

 60,000 acres in eastern Tennessee, and a 



good deal of land, in addition, in the Ap- 

 palachian range. It is fair to say that 

 the southern end of the country, which 

 for a long time was slow in taking up 

 this new movement, has now waked up. 



In the Northeast there is the work in 

 Maine, likely to lead to the adoption of 

 forest methods on a large scale not only 

 by the Great Northern Paper Company, 

 but by many other similar organiza- 

 tions ; the work in New York State, 

 with which you are familiar, and much 

 more. 



There is also before us, and that is 

 the most important work the Bureau 

 has, the preparation of forest working 

 plans for the national forest reserves. 



In forest investigation the field is so 

 large that it is difficult to talk about it 

 briefl}-. We know so little of our for- 

 ests, we have actual statistics of so few 

 of the commercial trees, that it is prac- 

 tically possible to do an almost unlimited 

 amount of work, if you have the men, 

 in any particular section of the countr}'. 

 We hope to continue studies of impor- 

 tant hardwoods in the Smoky Mountains 

 on the Cumberland Plateau, of second- 

 growth hardwoods in New England, Bal- 

 sam in Maine, Western Yellow Pine in 

 Arizona, and Sugar Pinein Californiaand 

 Oregon. Some of this work is already 

 under way. Especially we are going 

 to study, and have alread}^ begun to some 

 extent, the second-growth question in 

 the East, and particularly in New Eng- 

 land. The whole question of second 

 growth needs to be investigated and put 

 on a practical business-like basis. We 

 know something now about certain kinds 

 of second growth about the time it 

 takes to grow a second crop, and soon 

 but I do not think enough attention has 

 been given to it hitherto. 



Nor do I think enough attention has 

 been given to small holdings. The 

 Bureau has often been forced into the 

 consideration of large holdings by their 

 very extent. Now we want to do more 

 work for the individual farmer, which, 

 of course, means the preparation of 

 working plans for a few and the wide 

 publication of the results. 



The Hickories, Oaks, Ashes, Elms, 

 Chestnuts, Beeches, and Sweet Gum re- 

 quire attention, mainly in the South; 



