259 



The September series of papers on the Paleontologic Record 

 now running in the Popular Science Monthly deals with ontogeny 

 and its relation to phylogeny. While the parallel between these 

 is recognized as "a powerful aid to investigation" one paper warns 

 the paleontologist not to assume too much for it. Another con- 

 cludes that "the young give us very little which is not deceptive 

 in reconstructing ancestral forms." The next paper in the 

 series, however, says "When, however, the student of post- 

 embryonic ontogeny compares the youthful stages of an indi- 

 vidual with the adult of immediately preceding species of the 

 same genetic series, the fact of recapitulation becomes at once 

 apparent." The references are mainly zoological, but are well 

 worth the botanists' perusal. 



In a paper on the economics of waste, and conservation in 

 the Atlantic Monthly for September John Bates Clark calls 

 attention to the fact the "common allegation is true that a small 

 area of growing trees is capable of meeting the entire demand 

 of the country for lumber", but he briefly adds "It will do so at a 

 price.'' The "one palliative fact about a monopoly of forests" 

 is that "it would let new forests grow." Still Professor Clark 

 is one of the last to present a plea for monopolies; and he presents 

 the case for forests clearly when he says: "In another respect 

 forestry is peculiar. Conservation not only permits, but requires, 

 the use of the thing that is the object of care. . . . The scientific 

 treatment of forests not only does not preclude a use of them, but 

 positively requires it, and complete disuse is itself wasteful. 

 Judicious cutting may go on forever without lessening the supply 

 of timber which a forest contains, while refraining for all cutting 

 is like letting fruit or growing crops go to decay. The trees that 

 are ripe for use may give place to others which will keep up the 

 succession and preserve forever the integrity of the forest; and 

 few indeed are the public measures which would do as much for 

 the general welfare as insisting on this amount of conservation." 



