1904 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



ministration of Timber Lands in Can- 

 ada," Aubrey White, Assistant Com- 

 missioner of Crown Lands, Toronto, 

 Ont. ; " Forestry in Relation to Irriga- 

 tion," J. S. Dennis, Superintendent of 

 Irrigation of the Canadian Pacific Rail- 

 way Company, Calgary, Alberta ; "For- 

 est Reproduction in Germany," Dr. A. 

 Harold Unwin, of the Dominion For- 

 estry Branch, Ottawa ; "Forest Man- 

 agement," John Bertram, President 

 Dominion Transportation Commission; 

 "Forestry Education," John Loudon, 

 M. A., LL. D., President Toronto Uni- 

 versity; " Some Ontario Forestry Prob- 

 lems," Prof. H. L. Hutt, Guelph. 



A banquet was held at the King Ed- 

 ward Hotel on the evening of March 

 10, at which speeches were delivered 

 by prominent public men. 



On the invitation of E. G. Joly de 

 Lotbiniere, it was decided to make Que- 

 bec the next place of meeting. 



Society of At the residence of Mr. 



American Pinchot, March 10, Dr. 



Foresters. von Schrenck gave a 



most interesting discus- 

 sion of the work which he is directing 

 in various parts of the United States in 

 experimenting on the chemical treat- 

 ment of inferior woods to lengthen their 

 useful period as railway ties, poles, posts, 

 cross-arms, and piles. 



Mr. George Woodruff, Attorney of the 

 Bureau of Forestry, spoke briefly of the 

 various land laws which are a matter of 

 such interest and importance as regards 

 matters of forest and water conservation 

 in the West. 



At the usual Thursday meeting of the 

 Society, held March 24, at the residence 

 of the Forester, Mr. Olmstead and Mr. 

 Allen talked briefly of forest-reserve 

 matters. 



Mr. Olmstead, confining his remarks 

 to Arizona, urged that in this territory 

 the utmost care should be exercised in 

 husbanding the timber and other forest 

 resources, and that grazing should be 

 most carefully regulated, since a satis- 

 factory new growth is secured only with 

 difficulty on account of climatic condi- 

 tions, and the soil is so friable that when 

 rain does occur erosion is excessive and 



irrigation reservoirs are eventually clog- 

 ged with silt. 



Mr. Allen, speaking of Idaho, Mon- 

 tana, and Colorado, said that in the 

 northern country the greatest value of 

 forest reserves lies, as in Arizona, in 

 their power to conserve water and soil. 

 There are, however, a few forested areas 

 in which the value of the timber itself 

 is the prime consideration, since if these 

 were stripped, and the timber exported, 

 the local mines could not be developed. 



Nevertheless, in one section mining 

 men are afraid to support, publicly, the 

 fact that they desire the timber near 

 them reserved, because the implication 

 that the supply is exhaustible would 

 injure their stocks. 



He advanced the opinion that many 

 of the new reserves should be held with- 

 out applying many of the present re- 

 serve regulations until Congress fur- 

 nishes funds sufficient to give them a 

 ranger service adequate to enforce such 

 regulations satisfactorily. 



This opinion is based on observations 

 that local hostility is frequently due, 

 not to the reserves themselves, but to 

 inefficient administration. 



Reports of Severe forest fires are 



Fires. reported from Georgia 



and South Carolina dur- 

 ing the last two weeks of March. 



In the first week Kansas and Okla- 

 homa suffered from prairie fires which 

 swept the remaining feed from the 

 range, destroyed farms, threatened vil- 

 lages, and killed five persons. Hundreds 

 were made destitute. 



Forestry It is announced that 



Lectures. Mr. Overton W. Price, 



Assistant Forester of the 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture, will 

 deliver a series of four lectures before 

 the senior class of the Yale Forest School , 

 covering the organization of the field- 

 work of the Bureau of Forestry, the 

 point of view of the Bureau toward its 

 field-work, and an outline of the methods 

 under which field-work is carried on. 



These lectures will be given at Mil- 

 ford, Pennsylvania, during the last week 

 of this month. 



