932 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVII. No. 441. 



Britain being by five per cent, annually in 

 the average; for Germany and France, ten 

 per cent., and for the United States the 

 apparent increase indicated by censiis sta- 

 tistics is above this last figure. 



The total wood consumption for the 

 United States is placed at round twenty- 

 five billion cubic feet, of which over seven 

 billion is log-size material, the impoi'tant 

 part needed for the industries. 



After analyzing the relative value and 

 importance of the different parts of this 

 consumption, in which the conifers are 

 shown to furnish three fourths of the log- 

 size material, the question of supply is dis- 

 cussed. 



It is shown that Canada, the only coun- 

 try from which such supplies can be im- 

 ported, can not be relied upon for any 

 length of time. 



A probability calculation of the present 

 stand of virgin timber in the United States, 

 ready to supply the demand for lumber, 

 although, admittedly on a slender basis, 

 brings out the improbability, if not im- 

 possibility, of meeting the increasing de- 

 mand for another thirty years, under pres- 

 ent methods of utilization. Even if the 

 entire forest area of 500 million acres were 

 supposed still fully stocked with the aver- 

 age stand per acre, as reported by the cen- 

 sus in the holdings of lumbermen — an ab- 

 surd proposition— the stock on hand would 

 be exhausted within that period. 



The possibilities of securing the require- 

 ments from the reproduction in the natural 

 forest are discussed on the basis of Euro- 

 pean experiences, and with proper refer- 

 ence to the damaging forest fires. It is 

 shown that even under good forestry prac- 

 tice, the present increasing demand could 

 from the present area be supplied only for 

 a limited time. Hence the efforts to secure 

 such forest management and greater econ- 

 omy in the use of timber are not too early, 



but rather too late, and the dallying with 

 the problem by the legislatures fatal. 



Sociological Aspects of the Irrigation Prob- 

 lem: Guy E. Mitchell, editor. The Na- 

 tional Honie-Maker. 



The reclamation of arid America 

 through government construction of irriga- 

 tion works will furnish for years to come 

 an effective outlet for the industrious sur- 

 plus of our great cities. The irrigation 

 sections of the west present almost ideal 

 rural conditions. The tendency is, where 

 water is used for farming, to subdivide 

 land into small individual holdings, which 

 gives to a community a prosperity and sta- 

 bility not found in larger farming districts, 

 nor in cities. This is not a new idea. But 

 while this is being done, the people of the 

 entire United States will become so edu- 

 cated on irrigation matters and irrigation 

 methods that there will be a gradual 

 spreading eastward of the irrigation idea, 

 which will eventually result in the subdi- 

 vision of great numbers of large eastern 

 and southern farms and plantations which 

 are now farmed without thought of arti- 

 ficial water supply, into smaller irrigated 

 farms. Never a season goes by even in the 

 best watered districts of the rain belt that 

 there is not some period of plant growth 

 where the judicious application of water 

 would very greatly increase the yield, and 

 in some years double and treble it. It takes 

 only a year of excessive drought among 

 eastern farmers to get them talking about 

 irrigation, but little comes of it, for the 

 reason that they are entirely unfamiliar 

 with irrigation methods and have no idea 

 how to go about the practice of supple- 

 menting the natural water supply. 



The irrigation then of the one hundred 

 million acres of western plains and valleys, 

 while it will create innumerable small rural 

 homes of five, ten, twenty or thirty acres 



