No. 4.] FARM FORESTRY. 291 



Our great national timber tracts in the west are not to be 

 held as public pleasure grounds pure and simple, as some 

 have sai)})oscd. They are to be worked on a ])usiness basis, 

 and their mature growth harvested and marketed for the 

 good of the nation. Even if they fail for a time to do more 

 than pay their own running expenses, there will still remain 

 a distinct profit to the nation, in that the water powers rising 

 in the midst of those forests will l)e insured for all time to 

 the use of the irrigated farms and to the mills of a wide 

 section. To furnish timber and to conserve the water sup- 

 ply is the main purpose of those reserves, and the same is 

 true of the New York and Pennsylvania reservations also. 

 As a secondary consideration, they constitute vast public 

 pleasure and hunting grounds. Of course we have tliose 

 other reservations, the great national parks like the Yellow- 

 stone and Yosemite, which are pleasure grounds pure and 

 simple, and whose timber is not to be considered in a com- 

 mercial light. These stand in much the same relation to 

 the nation as do the Blue Hills, Middlesex Fells, Mt. Grey- 

 lock and jNIt. AYachusett public reservations to the State of 

 Massachusetts. They protect the water supply of certain 

 areas, and furnish wild recreation grounds for vast numbers 

 of people. These are not forests in the forester's sense of 

 the word, and yet they represent one branch of the science, 

 in that these woodlands are being cared for with a view to 

 improving the native growth, that a perpetual wild forest 

 may be maintained. 



But Massachusetts has entered upon yet another piece 

 of important forestry, which has an indirect commercial 

 side. This is the protection of one of our most important 

 harbors and its neighboring town from a sIoav but certain 

 engulfment in shifting sand. Provincetown, out on the tip 

 of Cape Cod, is the proud possessor of the only good and 

 available har])or between Boston and Martha's Vineyard ; 

 but, owing to the improvident cutting of the original growth 

 of trees and beach sod along the eastern side of the cai)e, the 

 storms have driven in the sand of the Atlantic until it stands 

 to-day in miniature mountains, but moving mountains, over 

 against the town and steadily creeping upon it. To stop 

 this movement of the sand was the forester's work, and the 



