FOREST NOTES 



747 



wharves. The total income from special use 

 permits in 1914 was over $131,000. 



Farmers, prospectors, and local settlers of 

 all classes, who needed timber for their own 

 use in the construction of houses, barns, 

 fences, and the like, were given free more than 

 120,000,000 feet of National Forest timber 

 during 1914, while about 14,000,000 feet was 

 sold to settlers, ranchers, and others at cost 

 prices. The timber sale business of the 

 National Forests amounts to about $1,250,000 

 annually, more than 1,500,000,000 board feet 

 of stumpage having been sold to lumber 

 operators last year. 



The National Forests contain most of the 

 picturesque wilderness in the country, and 

 their recreational resources are practically 

 unlimited. More than 2,000 cottages have 

 been built on the forests by summer residents 

 under the permit system, which has been 

 supplemented by a law providing that tracts 

 of 5 acres or less may be leased for periods not 

 to exceed thirty years. This law, under which 

 leasing regulations have just been promulgated 

 by the Secretary of Agriculture, is expected to 

 stimulate recreational development of the 

 forests. Already a large number of applica- 

 tions to lease National Forest land for summer 

 residence sites have been received, and even 

 communities are beginning to take advantage 

 of the forests situated near them by obtaining 

 tracts for use as picnic, camping, and play- 

 grounds. 



The State-owned lands in the Adirondacks 

 and Catskills must eventually become a very 

 productive forest area giving large returns to 

 the State not alone from the products of the 

 forest but as a tremendous reservoir for water 

 storage and as a recreation place for all the 

 people of the State. For a number of years 

 the question of how to handle safely and 

 effectively these State-owned forests has been 

 before the people in one form or another. 

 During the past year the Faculty of The 

 College of Forestry at Syracuse, made up of 

 fourteen graduate Foresters, has been giving 

 this whole question careful study and there 

 have been regular discussions held every week 

 or two taking up every possible phase of the 

 question. From these discussions there has 

 come gradually the idea that the only safe 

 way in which to treat the forest lands of the 

 Adirondacks and Catskills as a great State 

 resource is to place them under a Constitu- 

 tional Conservation Commission. 



New York leads all the other States in the 

 Union in lumber consumption, with a total 

 annual bill for timber of all kinds of over 

 $100,000,000. Enough wood is used annually 

 in the industries of the State to make a board 

 walk 1,000 feet wide and 1 inch thick from 

 Syracuse along the New York Central to New 

 York City and part way back. 



Federal Government. New York owns one- 

 fifth of the forest land of the State and one- 

 fourth of the standing timber. Owing to a 

 clause in the Constitution this timber can 

 not be cut even though it is dying or dead and 

 a menace to healthy timber about it. 



H. S. Betts has been appointed Chief of the 

 Office of Industrial Research of the Forest 

 Service and reported in Washington early in 

 May. He takes the place of O. T. Swan, who 

 recently resigned. Mr. Betts had been con- 

 nected with the Forest Service Laboratory at 

 Madison, Wis. 



Out of a total of 142 forest fires this spring 

 in eighteen counties in Kentucky where there 

 are Forest Wardens, seventy-eight were 

 caused by burning brush; by hunters, ten; 

 railroads, eight; saw mills, four; incendiary 

 five; and thirty-four were of unknown origin. 

 There were ten more fires during the spring up 

 to April 30, than during the whole of 1914. 

 While the fires in the aggregate did immense 

 damage to younger growth, their discovery by 

 the wardens prevented widespread destruction. 



Thomas B. Wyman, Secretary-Forester of the 

 Northern Protective Association at Munising, 

 Mich., has devised a novel method of keeping 

 before the eyes of men who go into the woods 

 the necessity of taking precautions against 

 forest fires. On the backs of playing cards 

 which are distributed in packs by the Associa- 

 tion, he sounds a warning, and on the faces of 

 the cards each heart, spade, club and diamond, 

 bears a brief but pointed sentence urging 

 better care of the forests. 



Chief Forester Henry S. Graves, who was 

 on a tour of western forests with Secretary of 

 Agriculture Houston, was called East early in 

 May by the serious illness of his father Prof. 

 W. B. Graves, of Andover, Mass. Mr. Graves 

 fortunately was able to reach his father in 

 time to be with him when he died. 



The College of Forestry of the University 

 of Washington was given the unanimous 

 decision of the Judges as having the best 

 exhibit at the Engineers' Open House, given 

 on the campus at the University recently. 

 The Judges were H. C. Gill, Mayor of Seattle; 

 President Henry Landes, of the University of 

 Washington; Kenneth C. Beaton, of the 

 staff of the Seattle Post Intelligencer, and 

 Almon H. Fuller, Dean of the College of 

 Engineering. 



Mayor Gill based his decision on the dif- 

 ficulty of bringing the great out-doors within 

 the compass of a small room ; President Landes 

 complimented the Foresters on the amount of 

 work accomplished in so short a time; Mr. 

 Beaton gave the Foresters his vote because 

 their exhibit was the most original; while 

 Dean Fuller thought that the utilization of 

 the material at hand was most clever. 



In the United States as a whole four-fifths 

 of the standing timber is privately owned, and 

 one-fifth is owned by various States and the 



United States Forester Coert Dubois, with 

 headquarters at San Francisco, has decided 

 to present badges to the Boy Scouts of Cali- 



