528 GEOGRAPHIC MISCELLANEA 



248 feet per mile, will soon be a thing of the past, a new route, with a 

 maximum grade of only 3 per cent, being in course of construction eight 

 miles south of the existing line. 



Hydrographic investigations have been extended by the Nicaragua 

 Canal Commission to the Isthmus of Panama, the work being still under 

 the charge of Mr Arthur P. Davis, of the Division of Hydrography, 

 U. S. Geological Survey. The Panama Company has been maintaining 

 on Chagres river three elaborate nilometers or automatic devices for 

 recording the height of water. Two of these records have been kept for 

 a number of years. A third was established in April, 1899, at Alajuela. 

 It is somewhat extraordinary that hitherto no observations of rainfall 

 have been maintained above these river stations and no measurements 

 made of the Rio Grande, the stream on the Pacific slope. Arrangements 

 have been made for obtaining a record of rainfall and for measuring this 

 stream, every facility being afforded by the French company. 



The article on " The Relation of Forests and Forest Fires," by Mr Gif- 

 ford Pinchot, Forester of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, which 

 appeared in the October number of this Magazine, is receiving much 

 favorable comment from students of forestry. A feature of the article is 

 the excellent set of original pictures with which Mr Pinchot has illus- 

 trated his text. It is regrettable that, through an error for which Mr 

 Pinchot was not responsible, several mistakes should have crept into the 

 titles. The photograph on page 400, showing most clearly two genera- 

 tions of lodgepole pine, was taken by Prof. C. S. Crandall, of Fort Collins, 

 Colo., a collaborator in the Division of Forestry, and should have been 

 credited to him. Four feet beneath the large cedar tree standing in the 

 background on the right of the cut on page 402, a layer of charcoal was 

 found — a proof that the tree had grown up after a fire. The title of the 

 picture of a seedling longleaf pine on page 399 is misleading, for while 

 the drooping needles still retain their natural downward curve, the young 

 tree is too far advanced for them any longer to afford protection to the 

 lower stem in case of fire. 



In a recent communication to the Department of State (see Consular 

 Reports, vol. lxi, No. 230, p. 487) the U. S. consul at Stratford, Ontario, 

 expresses the opinion that the most serious problem that confronts the 

 Canadian people of the future is material for fuel. He states that the 

 gigantic lumber industries and the great annual forest fires have so de- 

 nuded the timber area of Ontario that the people are thoroughly alarmed 

 about the future fuel supply. So long and severe are the winters that 

 an ordinary residence will consume $100 worth of fuel in a year. It has 

 been well known for years that there were extensive beds of peat bogs 

 in Canada, and particularly in the Province of Ontario, and an effort has 

 been made during the past six months to utilize this product of nature. 

 It has been tested in locomotives with excellent results, 100 pounds of 

 peat having been found to be equal to 95.15 pounds of coal. The heat 

 produced is much greater than that of coal, but it is 8 per cent deficient 

 in lasting power. The recent invention of machinery, by means of which 

 vast areas of hitherto unused bogs can be converted into marketable peat, 

 has opened up a new Canadian industry. 



