43 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



thousand strong, a great reserve force that is coming 

 to your aid in forestry, although as yet you may regard 

 us as the awkward squad. Forestry was added to our 

 work only three years ago, but the committee questions 

 if any department of the General Federation can show 

 so great an increase of interest during the three years 

 as in forestry. Thirty-eight States have, where it was 

 not already a department of work, added work in 

 forestry, and the committees are enthusiastically 

 spreading the propaganda of tree-planting, forest 

 preservation, and irrigation. Like a prairie fire, in- 

 terest among State Federations in national and State 

 movements for the preservation of large blocks of 

 forest, is spreading and blazing up here and there 

 from the cypress groves of California to the spruce 

 clad slopes of New Hampshire. 



Forestry as apprehended in our work covers both 

 arboriculture and scientific forestry. A very general 

 activity is manifest throughout the length and breadth 

 of the country in arboriculture, or tree-planting for 

 decorative purposes ; parks, cemeteries, school grounds, 

 highways and treeless plains in rural districts, towns 

 and villages, are coming into their inheritance of 

 beauty and beneficence through the grateful shade and 

 presence in their midst of oak and linden, larch and 

 chestnut, palm and pine, as numerous instances in the 

 State reports testify. Not always have the clubs taken 

 the initiative, but all are actively cooperating, and in 

 many cases are the originators of forestry movements. 



The work of the Thursday Club of St. Paul deserves 

 especial mention. The club last spring obtained the 

 consent of the Board of Education to make an appeal, 

 through the teachers of the public schools, to the chil- 

 dren to purchase and plant fruit trees on Arbor Day, 

 which the club agreed to furnish at small cost. The 





