838 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. 9, 1911. 
protection on lands of their own, which are no 
more valuable in money and far less important 
to the community than the North Woods. More 
than double the present force is badly needed. 
The present fire law, which rigidly forbids 
any burning of brush at certain seasons, regard¬ 
less of the weather, and permits it at certain 
other seasons, equally regardless of the weather, 
often increases the danger from fire. Burning 
should not be allowed at any time except under 
permit, and with the personal presence and 
supervision of a forest officer. 
The law now requires that the tops of coni¬ 
ferous trees shall be lopped immediately after 
felling. The snow crushes lopped branches close 
to the ground, so that they keep moist, rot more 
promptly, and lessen the risk from fire. Some 
criticism has been made of the value of lopping 
tops. From personal observation on land lum¬ 
bered as much as twenty years ago where no 
tops were lopped, and on similar land in the 
Adirondacks lumbered ten years ago where lop¬ 
ping was practiced, I can assert with confidence 
that lopping does accomplish its purpose in mak¬ 
ing the forest safer against fire. Spruce tops 
honestly lopped rot down in ten years more 
thoroughly than unlopped tops in twenty, and 
even at the end of six or seven years present 
little or no material to feed a fire. Fire on 
areas well lopped is much easier to fight than 
on unlopped lands, reproduction of the forest 
is not hampered, and the general effect is en¬ 
tirely good. 
The efficiency of a forest force depends less 
on good laws than it does on good men. In the 
past the State forest force has at times been 
composed largely of political appointees, and has 
suffered in consequence. While a great improve¬ 
ment in the force has taken place, I recommend 
strongly that this improvement be maintained 
and increased by requiring all members of the 
forest force to pass a Civil Service examination 
before appointment, and by giving permanent 
employment to as many men as possible. Some 
temporary fire guards will always be required, 
but men employed during only a part of the 
year take less interest in their work and render 
poorer service than members of a regular force 
who expect to follow one line of work during 
their lives. Without permanent employment the 
State cannot compete for the best men with 
other employers, and will have to take what 
they leave. The thorough enforcement of the 
top lopping law alone would require the services 
during the winter of the larger part of the 
present force. 
The Civil Service examination for such men 
can and should be made thoroughly practical 
by bearing on their training and experience as 
woodsmen and fire fighters, and their local 
knowledge of the country in which they are to 
work, and by actual test of physical ability and 
woodcraft conducted in the forest. This prac¬ 
tice, applied in the national forests of the 
United States, has contributed more than any 
other single cause to the efficiency of the field 
force. 
The salaries of the patrolmen are too low. 
they should be increased from $60 a month 
as at present to $75 a month, with the certainty 
of reasonable promotion for good work. In 
every practicable case appointments to higher 
positions should be made by promotion and not 
by the selection of men outside the present force. 
The title “patrolman” should be changed to 
“forest ranger,” for the duties are very much 
wider than fire patrol alone. 
The Adirondack Park contains not less than 
120,000 acres of forest land so completely de¬ 
nuded by fire that planting is necessary. In 
many places not only the forest but the soil it¬ 
self has been burned entirely away and the bare 
rock is exposed. There is also about 50,000 
acres on which planting is desirable to reinforce 
the present sparse young growth. It is most 
fortunate that the State is admirably prepared 
for the planting work. Its forest nurseries, 
under the direction of C. R. Pettis, superin¬ 
tendent of State forests, have become models 
both in the quality of the stock produced and 
the low cost of growing it, while the forest 
plantations set out by the State are among the 
most successful in any country. 
During the last few years very little forest 
planting has been done on the State land, be¬ 
cause the sale of seedlings to private owners 
at cost has taken nearly the entire product of 
the nurseries. Private owners should be able 
to buy seedlings from the State, but it is at 
least equally important that the State should 
begin on an adequate scale and without further 
delay in its own great task in forest planting. For 
this purpose the capacity of the nurseries has 
recently been increased to produce about 11,000,- 
000 young trees a year. At least 5,000 acres a 
year should be planted up. At this rate, if no 
more land is devastated by fire, it will still re¬ 
quire a quarter of a century to reforest the 
denuded State lands within the Adirondack 
Park. 
The results of work done on the Webb and 
Whitney tracts under my general supervision and 
under the direction of Henry S. Graves, now 
chief of the United States Forest Service, have 
proved beyond contradiction that forestry is 
practical from every point of view in soft wood 
logging in the Adirondacks. On both these 
tracts, whose total area is over 100,000 acres, 
each tree to be cut was marked, and as a rule 
sound spruce trees below ten inches in diameter 
were left standing. Dead trees enough were 
left to provide for a second crop, the forest 
cover was conserved by moderate cutting, simple 
rules were enforced to prevent waste of timber 
and injury to young growth in the logging, and 
the tops of felled trees were lopped as a safe¬ 
guard against fire. 
The forest was improved and the work paid. 
1 he proportion of spruce trees in the woods is 
already increased, and the older cuttings are 
even now ready to produce a cut of spruce as 
valuable as the first crop. The beauty of the 
forest is unimpaired, and there is little sign, ex¬ 
cept the abundant young spruces, an occasional 
moss-covered stump, or the trace of an old 
logging road that the forest was ever lumbered 
at all. 
But in face of these notable exceptions, and 
of a quarter of a century of explanation and 
agitation, conservative lumbering in the Adiron¬ 
dacks has made little or no progress. The usual 
destructive treatment of private timber lands to¬ 
day makes it perfectly clear that the general 
adoption of forestry in the Adirondacks can be 
brought about by law, and in no other way. 
1 his is true in spite of the fact that in very 
few places in the United States is the financial 
and physical opportunity for practical forestry 
so good as it is here. Yet nowhere has need¬ 
less destruction gone further. 
It is time to- stop playing with the situation. 
Ostensible efforts at private reforestation, in 
which tens of acres are replanted for hundreds 
or thousaids that are destroyed, merely serve 
to distract attention from the main issue. What 
is needed on privately owned timber lands is 
the proper handling of the forest, and not in¬ 
adequate replanting after its destruction. The 
present method, if allowed to continue, will in¬ 
evitably result in the devastation of substantially 
all the Adirondack timber lands held for lumber¬ 
ing purposes, as well as in the burning of large 
areas of State lands by fires starting in the slash 
thus caused. And in the end the State itself 
will be forced to take over these denuded lands 
and replant them at great expense. 
More is done to help the lumbermen by the 
State of New York than any other State in the 
Union. The maintenance of the mountain look¬ 
out station and the cost of fire patrol is paid 
for entirely from the State funds. In several 
Western States the lumbermen voluntarily bear 
these expenses themselves. When a logging crew 
is requisitioned by a New York forest officer to 
fight fire on the land of a lumberman, that lum¬ 
berman is reimbursed for the time spent by his 
own men in protecting his own property. State 
taxes on forest land in the Adirondacks are 
negligible, while other taxes are generally based 
on so low a valuation that they do not hinder 
forestry. Yet in spite of all this, these moun¬ 
tain forests, in which every citizen of the State 
has a real interest, continue to be destroyed 
without let or hindrance. It is time to stop. 
I would not be understood as charging that 
the Adirondack* lumbermen as a body are bad 
citizens, or that they are purposely injuring the 
State which protects them. On the contrary, 
many of them are anxious to improve the pres¬ 
ent unfortunate conditions. For example, the 
Emporium Lumber Company, which owns about 
82,000 acres of Adirondack forests, has agreed 
to carry out a plan for cutting, to be prepared 
by me, on an area of one square mile, as a first 
step toward what I hope will be the conservative 
logging of the whole tract. As W. L. Sykes, 
president of the company well says, the differ¬ 
ence between conservative logging and forest de¬ 
struction is that in the one case the timber land 
is an increasing asset, in the other a diminishing 
one. 
One of the most important recommendations 
I have to make is that the Camp-fire Club shall 
invite a committee of the Empire State Forest 
Products Association to join with a committee 
of its own in working out the details of practi¬ 
cal legislation, which shall protect the interests 
of the lumbermen at the same time that it pre¬ 
vents the destruction of the forests. F. L. 
Moore, president of the association, has already 
expressed his entire approval of this plan. The 
Conservation Commission should be represented 
at any such conference by the superintendent of 
State forests. In my judgment a perfectly prac¬ 
ticable scheme can be worked out under which 
the added cost to the lumbermen of practicing 
forestry as against destroying the forests should 
seldom, if ever, exceed a cost of twenty-five 
cents per thousand feet of logs cut. 
But not all of the Adirondack lumbering con¬ 
cerns are controlled by men of good will. A 
peculiarly aggravated case of needless and con- 
