1905 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



287 



of the U. S. Reclamation Service, six 

 feet two in his stockings, a graduate 

 of Yale, but for 18 years interested in 

 Montana. He is well equipped by 

 long experience in actual construc- 

 tion in this country to direct the 

 work necessary to subdue the forces 

 of nature found in the Sun River pro- 

 ject. With a wiry cayuse pony un- 

 der him, trained by experience to the 

 usages of the plains, Sam Robbins is 

 independent of railways. For the 

 past decade the Sun River irrigation 

 project has been his hobby, his day 

 dream, but not until the Government 

 came into the field was there a possi- 

 bility of carrying it to completion. 



POSSIBILITIES OF SUN RIVER VALLEY. 

 Basing the capacity of the Sun Riv- 



er lands upon the average census farm 

 returns for Montana, the Sun River 

 Valley, when reclaimed, should yield 

 of rough crops nearly 10,000,000 bush- 

 els of wheat, or 600,000 tons of alfalfa, 

 worth this year in Great Falls $15 a 

 ton. 



The production of vegetables, sugar 

 beets, or fruit, will be immense. Once 

 brought under a perfect system of irri- 

 gation as the one the Government 

 proposes, this valley will support a 

 prosperous farm population of 15,000 

 and make a splendid city of Great 

 Falls, whose marvelous manufacturing 

 possibilities in the shape of 340,000 

 latent horse power racing down the 

 falls of the Missouri are already at- 

 tracting attention. 



A SUGGESTION REGARDING THE 

 NATIONAL FOREST RESERVES 



Editor of FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION : 

 Dear Sir : 



HT HE recent transfer of the admin- 

 istration of the national forest 

 reserves from the General Land Office 

 to the Bureau of Forestry opens such 

 broad and varied opportunities for 

 forest work, that we are inclined al- 

 ready to look into the future and 

 picture to ourselves some of the im- 

 portant changes that are destined to 

 take place within those areas. We 

 may naturally expect to see the princi- 

 ples of silviculture and general pro- 

 tective and economic forestry applied 

 more extensively and effectively than 

 heretofore, while the history of the 

 Bureau gives assurance that local in- 

 terests and practical ideas will receive 

 every consideration in the manage- 

 ment of the reserves. In thinking 

 over the future development thus 

 promised by the service of the Bureau, 

 I have been impressed especially with 

 the intricacy of the silvicultural con- 

 ditions. It has occurred to me in this 



connection that certain areas within 

 the reserves might be utilized in a 

 special way to simplify silvicultural 

 problems. Believing that the sugges- 

 tion which I have to make may pos- 

 sibly be of interest to readers of this 

 magazine, I will, with your permis- 

 sion, outline it in the followiHg para- 

 graph : 



Whoever has studied the artificial 

 forests of Germany, France, and other 

 European countries in which systems 

 of forestry have become firmly estab- 

 lished, must have noticed the restric- 

 tions there placed upon the free play 

 of nature's forces and the consequent 

 loss in suggestiveness to the student 

 of forest life. Where trees are com- 

 manded to live in mixture or separted 

 according to species, to grow densely 

 or openly, to disappear at a certain age; 

 where, also, undergrowth and surface- 

 growth are encouraged or excluded, 

 as the case may be, and even the nature 

 of the soil is gradually brought into 

 subjection, the language of the for- 

 est becomes less and less varied in its 

 expression. But where nature is al- 



