26 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



January 



acts. The growth and usefulness of 

 the Bureau has been phenomenal, and 

 especially gratifying is the wide public 

 recognition of the fact that this is a 

 practical bureau as well as a scientific 

 one. Lumbermen and forest owners 

 are engaged in a practical business, 

 and for them forestry is of interest and 

 importance only as a question of busi- 

 ness. The Bureau, recognizing this 

 fact, has put itself in close and useful 

 touch with both the producers and 

 consumers of the forest. 



The Bureau has received applica- 

 tions for assistance from land owners, 

 who desire to secure for their forest 

 holdings the best care, covering total 

 areas of 8,000,000 acres. It now has 

 under its management 20,000 acres in 

 woodlots and 500,000 acres of timber 

 tracts, while working plans have been 

 prepared by the Bureau for 823,000 

 more acres, and working plans are 

 now in preparation for an area aggre- 

 gating 3,578,514 acres. The tracts in- 

 volved are widely scattered, including 

 lands in the Southern pine regions, the 

 Lake State pineries, the Pacific North- 

 west, and the broad-leaf forests in the 

 lower Mississippi Valley. 



The advance of forestry where eco- 

 nomic and commercial advantages are 

 involved is rapid, for the larger private 

 interests are keenly alive to whatever 

 promises to be of value to them, and 

 are able to look forward into future 

 conditions. With the owners of small 

 forest acres, whose woodlots consti- 

 tute a vast area when considered in the 

 aggregate, forestry takes hold slowly. 

 They must be convinced of the benefits 

 afforded them by its practice, and so 

 the forester must go to them. When 

 the time comes, however, that sound 

 methods of cutting on the woodlots 

 have established themselves in the tra- 

 ditional practice of farming handed 

 down from father to son, we shall see 

 an enormously increased production 

 for such woodlands. The Bureau of 

 Forestry, recognizing that this is a 

 matter of prime importance and di- 

 rectly in line with the purposes for 

 which the Department of Agriculture 

 was created, has entered this field with 

 the definite purpose of continuing in it 

 until woodlot management shall have 



become as truly a part of farm prac- 

 tice as skillful methods of securing 

 field crops. 



EXAMINATIONS OF NATIONAL FOREST 

 RESERVATIONS. 



The forest reservations of the Uni- 

 ted States at present afford the great- 

 est single opportunity for the introduc- 

 tion of the practice of scientific for- 

 estry ; and the importance of properly 

 fixing their boundaries and examining 

 the character of timber growth within 

 them cannot be overestimated. In this 

 work the Bureau of Forestry has con- 

 tinued during the past year to perform 

 the excellent service of previous years. 

 The creation of new reserves and ad- 

 ditions to old reserves require the ex- 

 pert examination of the foresters from 

 the Bureau, before being finally pro- 

 claimed by the President, and the wise 

 practice of withdrawing temporarily 

 such areas as seem probably of such a 

 character that they should be made 

 forest reservations upon recommenda- 

 tion of these officers, gives good 

 ground for confidence that the nation 

 will not lose the forest lands which it 

 ought to guard through any lack of 

 early information. 



In connection with the reservations 

 of the government, forest planting and 

 experiments therein have been contin- 

 ued under the direction of the Bureau 

 with a view to arriving at such meth- 

 ods as will reduce the cost to such a 

 basis as to make this feasible on an ex- 

 tensive scale, where the same is need- 

 ed within the forest reservations. 

 Another line of work of the utmost 

 importance is the continued investiga- 

 tion of the Bureau in connection with 

 the available supply of timber for rail- 

 road ties. The question of a cheap 

 and still abundant material for this 

 purpose, in view of the rapidly dwin- 

 dling supplies, grows more important 

 every year. With this aim in view, 

 the study of the loblolly pine, which 

 has been carried on in many parts of 

 the South, was taken up in Texas, 

 where the great area of young growth 

 of loblolly pine furnished for this pur- 

 pose an unexcelled opportunity. 



This investigation considered the 

 questions of raising tie timber of this 



I 







