Deckmber 28, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



981 



may be necessary for the information of 

 the commission. The duties of fire war- 

 dens and the prevention of fires along rail- 

 roads and elsewhere, are entered into in 

 much detail, and an evident necessity is 

 provided for in requiring the appointment 

 of a chief fire warden to have supervision 

 of the town fire wardens, and by every 

 available means to secure the prevention 

 and the putting out of forest fires. 



In reviewing the law of 1900 one is par- 

 ticularly impressed with the fact that it has 

 been found necessary to entrust one man 

 with the direct superintendence of the forest 

 interests of the State, at the same time 

 holding him responsible to a board of com- 

 missioners for the intelligent and faithful 

 discharge of the duties of the ofiBce, also 

 that for the control of fires one man is 

 again held responsible, the chief fire warden 

 having this as his special and single func- 

 tion. This definite fixing of responsibility 

 can hardly fail to produce more satisfactory 

 results. It is further noticeable that ap- 

 pointments to the commission are still for 

 the term of five years, thus securing a per- 

 manent and consistent policy, and that the 

 State now pays for this service as liberally 

 as for other public work. In short, in the 

 State of New York forestry has now be- 

 come a recognized and permanent branch 

 of the public service. Subsequent experi- 

 ence will doubtless suggest changes in 

 methods of administration, but no interest 

 of the State is more securely entrenched in 

 law or more heartily sustained by public 

 opinion. 



School of Forestry. Practical Forestry in the 

 Adirondacks. 



New York has been the first State to es- 

 tablish a school of forestry. In 1898 a law 

 was enacted providing for the establishment 

 of a College of Forestry at Ithaca, in con- 

 nection with Cornell University. Thirty 

 thousand acres of land in the Adirondacks, 



for which the State paid $165,000 (includ- 

 ing buildings), were set apart to be con- 

 trolled by the university for a period of 

 thirty years, at the end of which time the 

 land is to become again the property of the 

 State as part of the forest preserve. The 

 sum of $10,000 was appropriated for the 

 maintenance of the school, and liberal ap- 

 propriations, namely, $30,000 for each of 

 the first two years, have since been made 

 for it. The trust was accepted by Cornell 

 University, and Dr. B. E. Fernow, at that 

 time chief of the Forestry Division of the 

 U. S. Agricultural Department, was ap- 

 pointed director of the school. The school 

 was promptly organized, instructors were 

 appointed, and a course of instruction en- 

 tered upon which has since been extended. 

 Practical forestry operations have been 

 conducted in the college forest since May, 

 1899, and students of the school are re- 

 quired to spend there a certain part of at 

 least two vacations in the practical study 

 of forestry. 



The amount of work that has been ac- 

 complished in the college forest in less than 

 a year and a half is surprising and in the 

 highest degree encouraging. A survey of 

 the property has been made, buildings have 

 been erected and remodeled, a nursery has 

 been established in which upwards of a 

 million seedlings have been raised, the 

 planting of a tract of burnt land with 

 young pine and spruce has been completed, 

 important experiments, such as planting in 

 avenues opened in the forest, are in prog- 

 ress, and minute records are carefully kept 

 as a basis for future study and practice. 

 Most interesting of all, however, is the fact 

 that extensive logging (by rail) operations 

 have been begun under forestry principles, 

 to remove the old hard-wood crop and re- 

 place it by a more valuable softwood crop 

 in mixture with the hard woods. The thor- 

 ough utilization of all the wood cut down 

 to the mere brush, for all of which a mar- 



