OCTOBEK 14, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



495 



non-payment of taxes by the owners. A 

 further recognition of the importance of 

 this interest followed two years ago by 

 establishiug the policy of land purchases for 

 the increase of this area, under which policy 

 one million dollars was expended last year 

 and half a million is at the disposal of the 

 Forest Preserve Board this year, while it is 

 expected by further purchases to increase 

 the State forest property to three million 

 acres, more or less. This year a further, 

 logical step in the pursuit of this State 

 policy was made by establishing a forestry 

 school for the professional education of the 

 managers of this State property and an 

 experimental forest area, in which the 

 method of managing the property might be 

 developed and elaborated. 



This school, the New York State College 

 of Forestry, has the distinction of being the 

 first institution of its kind in this country 

 where a professional study of the whole 

 subject of forestry in all its phases may be 

 pursued with opportunities almost equal to 

 the best in European forestry schools, ex- 

 cept for the absence of object lessons, which 

 it will take some time to create. 



Thus, while the art of forestry is as yet 

 hardly practiced, a place for the study of 

 the science, which must underlie the appli- 

 cation of the art, is established ; and this 

 entails the moral obligation upon the State 

 to proceed on its path to a technical man- 

 agement of its forest property. 



We may recall that the original forestry 

 law of New York, which was mainly drafted 

 by the writer and passed in 1885, contem- 

 plated a technical forest management of the 

 State property and hence conferred upon 

 the then established Forest Commission the 

 right to cut and sell wood. 



But no professional foresters were em- 

 ployed and no technical forest management 

 was attempted; the right to cut and sell 

 was exercised simply in selling stumpage 

 of spruce to lumbermen. 



The public, laboring under the mistaken 

 notion that forest preservation required ces- 

 sation of all cutting of trees, and not trust- 

 ing to the discretion of its ofiBcers — rightly 

 or wrongly — attempted to remedy the ab- 

 sence of technical advice by inserting into 

 the constitution of the State a clause which 

 prevents all cutting of wood on State lands 

 — a foolish provision from the forester's 

 point of view, but perhaps, from the stand- 

 point of expediency at the time, not entirely 

 reprehensible. 



It became apparent that, before a rational 

 forest management could be secured, it was 

 still necessary to educate the people first to 

 a true conception of what that involves; 

 that an object lesson was needed in order 

 to show that forest preservation did not 

 mean ' Woodman, spare that tree,' but 

 ' Woodman, cut those ti'ees judiciously;' 

 in other words, that forest utilization and 

 forest preservation by means of forest re- 

 production were not incompatible. 



Imbued with this idea, the Superintend- 

 ent of the reorganized or consolidated 

 Fisheries, Game and Forest Commission, in 

 his report for 1896, suggested the establish- 

 ment of such a demonstration of technical 

 forest management. 



Governor Black, taking interest in the 

 proposition, conceived the idea that such 

 an experiment, requiring a long time of con- 

 tinuous, unchanged policy, had best be re- 

 moved from the ever- changing influences of 

 politics and should be entrusted to a strong 

 and stable educational institution. 



This thought suggested the desirability 

 of going a step farther, namely, to provide 

 at the same time for the education of pro- 

 fessional foresters, the future managers of 

 the State's forest property, when, with the 

 accomplished demonstration and the exist- 

 ence of competent technical advice, the 

 constitutional bar to rational forestry might 

 be removed. 



Cornell University was selected to under- 



