OCTOBKE 14, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



501 



reducing the normal stock or wood capital 

 and representing, as it were, the interest. 

 We may, for instance, come to the conclu- 

 sion that on our 30,000-acre tract an annual 

 felling budget of two to three million feet, B. 

 M., of logs and eight to ten thousand cords of 

 wood may be indicated, for which we must 

 secure a mai-ket. It may also be found that 

 the working capital of wood, an accumula- 

 tion of capital and interest for centuries as 

 found in the virgin forest, is unnecessarily 

 large, beyond the normal, and hence should, 

 for good business reasons, be as quickly re- 

 duced as it can be done profitably, or else if 

 we have to deal with cutover lands we may 

 have to reduce our annual cut, saving 

 gradually enough to first establish the de- 

 sirable working capital. 



Finally, when all these bases for opera- 

 tion are ascertained we may formulate the 

 working plans and decide not only on the 

 quantities to be cut, the operations of im- 

 provement required, the manner of con- 

 ducting the whole management, but also 

 ■determine in what portions of the property 

 the principal activity is to be exercised 

 during the first ten or twenty years, leaving 

 it to the future manager to modify the plans 

 as experience and changes of condition in- 

 dicate. 



That a well-planned bookkeeping is neces- 

 fiarj"^ if we would want to know how our 

 business progresses is self-understood. Not 

 'only is it necessary to keep those accounts 

 of financial transactions which any business 

 requires, but each compartment in the forest 

 must be kept account of, with a separate 

 ledger account to show what material it has 

 furnished, what stock remains in it, what 

 operations it has required and whatever 

 position in the general scheme it takes. 



A demonstration and experimental area, 

 as the proposed school forest is to be, will, 

 to be sure, entail many operations which in 

 a mere business forest might be dispensed 

 with or delayed to more opportune time. 



Hence its financial results on the whole 

 may not satisfy the financier. No such ex- 

 periment, it may be asserted, can be made 

 to demonstrate the profitableness of a busi- 

 ness; it can only serve to show methods 

 and their results and to furnish the basis 

 and elements for profit calculations. Never- 

 theless it is expected that the experiment 

 will pay for itself, while furnishing the de- 

 sirable object lessons both to the students 

 and timberland owners, the citizens of the 

 State of New York, owners of the great 

 State Park, included. 



When this experiment is established, and 

 has demonstrated that rational forest man- 

 agement is possible in this country as well 

 as in the older countries, the constitutional 

 bar will undoubtedly be removed and the 

 entire State holdings placed under proper 

 technical administration, with the students 

 from the State College of Forestry its 

 managers. 



B. E. Feenow. 



Cornell TJniveesity. 



GEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY AT T3E AMERI- 

 CAN ASSOCIATION MEETING. 



II. 



14. Another Episode in the History of Ni- 

 agara River. By J. W. Spencer, Washing- 

 ton, D. C. This paper is a sequel to one 

 read before the American Association four 

 years ago, on the duration of Niagara Falls. 

 It announces the discovery that while the 

 falls were receding from Foster's flats to 

 the locality of the railway bridges the fall 

 of the river reached its maximum of 420 

 feet by the retreat of the Ontario waters to 

 the north. The return to the present 

 amount of 326 feet was interrupted by the 

 rising of the level of the lake in the gorge 

 to a height of 75 feet above its present 

 level, thus reducing the actual fall of the 

 river to 250 feet. The evidence of this is 

 preserved in the remains of a terrace de- 

 posit opposite the foot of Foster's flats and 



