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Sierra Club Bulletin. 



tive committee in turn were influenced by the personal and some- 

 what sentimental objection of wealthy owners of large tracts 

 of timber-land adjacent to the State forest to Dr. Fernow's 

 method of cutting the timber in the college forest. We doubt 

 if these wealthy Manhattan proprietors of Adirondack deer-for- 

 ests are capable of criticising a forester's working plans, or that 

 these plans would involve any real injury to the water-supply of 

 the region; but Director Fernow encountered too powerful 

 neighbors, probably ignorant of the very objects of forestry, 

 and the result is a serious check to forestry education in America. 

 Seventy undergraduates in forestry were obliged to abandon 

 their work at Cornell, and a prosperous school, for whose 

 work and training a nation has pressing need, is destroyed. 

 California should have a cordial sympathy for Dr. Fernow who 

 said at a critical moment some effective words in favor of our 

 California Redwood Park which had more weight with thought- 

 ful men than is generally known. We especially commend to 

 readers of the Bulletin Dr. Fernow's statistical article on the 

 "Timber Supply in the United States," in the Forestry Quarterly 

 during the past year. The latter journal is not to be discontinued 

 with the State college, but will be regularly published, with its 

 headquarters at Ithaca, N. Y., as formerly. 



tration of the forest reserves from the General Land Office to 

 the Bureau of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture. The 

 interest of the Sierra Club in this matter is well known. We 

 believe it means such economy and improved efficiency that it 

 would solve most of our difficulties upon the reserves in Cali- 

 fornia, and obviate most of the dangers connected with the 

 forest reserve policy, and there are dangers if the latter are 

 not made useful to the public. There is little to add to former 

 arguments except to urge California members of Congress to 

 amend this resolution, if it seems likely to fail in committee, 

 by proposing that the California Reserves — a large proportion 

 of the entire amount — be turned over to the Bureau of For- 

 estry. There would be no opposition in this State, and the 

 interest of California would be better subserved if the Bureau, 

 with its limited number of trained men, had only 9,000,000 

 acres, or a possible 15,000,000, to provide working-plans for 

 instead of the entire 70,000,000 acres, the amount in all the 

 forest reserves of the country at the present time. The 

 Bureau of Forestry has made good its promise of putting a 



Transfer of 

 Forest Reserves. 



Early in the present session of Congress 

 Representative Mondell introduced a bill 

 providing for the transfer of the adminis- 



