SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
NORTH AMERICAN FOREST RESEARCH. 
The National Research Council reports that it has published a com- 
plete summary of all of the scientific investigations upon forest 
problems which are now under way in the United States and in Canada 
as a bulletin upon “North American Forest Research.” This bul- 
letin was compiled by a Committee of the Society of American Foresters 
composed of :—Earl H. Clapp, Assistant Forester U.S. Forest Service; 
Clyde Leavitt, Commissioner of Conservation of Canada, Ottawa; 
Walter Mulford, Professor of Forestry, University of California; 
J. W. ‘Toumey, Director of the Forest School, Yale University; 
E. A. Ziegler, Director, State Forest Academy, Mount Alto, Penn. In 
this bulletin 519 different projects for investigation are described, 
including the reforestation of cut-over areas, the replacement of timber 
euttings by natural’ growth, the control of insect pests and fungus 
diseases of forest trees, beneficial modifications of lumbering practice, 
the: preservation of timber in use, the utilization of by-products, and 
the relation of forestry to rainfall, control of flood waters, grazing, &c. 
The importance of the most penetrating study upon the conservation of 
our remaining forest resources is brought home by the recent announce- 
ment of the Forest Service that “ three-fifths of the original timber of 
the United States is gone, and that we are using timber four times 
as fast as we are growing it.” The annual consumption in U.S.A. of 
lumber alone is over 300 board feet per capita, and of newsprint is 
33 pounds per capita. . Cut and burnt-over forest lands in the 
United States, now waste territory, equal in area the whole of the 
present standing forests of Denmark, Germany, Holland, Belgium, 
France, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal. The total population of 
these countries is about 152,200,000, nearly 50 per cent. greater than 
the population of the United States. 
INSECT PESTS. 
In connexion with tropical agriculture, attention has been directed 
to the question of the influence of the condition of the host-plant on 
infestation with sucking insects. It is believed that such pests as 
thrips on cacao and froghopper blight on sugar-cane can be held in 
check by increasing the resistance of the plant by improving agricul- 
tural conditions. In the Agricultwral News (vol. X¥X., No. 464), 
it is claimed that the “mosquito blight” of tea (caused by a capsid 
bug of the genus Helopeltis) is affected in a similar way, and that 
the condition of individual tea-bushes determines the susceptibility to 
‘attack. The distribution of mosquito blight appears to be connected 
with soil conditions, and analytical data indicate that soils on which 
_the pest is prevalent show similarities in the potash-phosphoric adid 
ratio, the addition of potash having an appreciable, though irregular, 
action in reducing the blight. Water-logging tends to encourage in- 
festation, probably because the vitality of bushes grown on such areas 
is lowered; draining is the remedy advised in such cases. Acidity and 
poverty of soil are other factors which vitiate the health of the: tea- 
bushes, so rendering them more liable to attack. 
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