of woodland for the practical field work of the students, and several other owners have expressed their desire to devote their wood-lots to this purpose.
Such schools as the Yale Forest School and the thoroughly equipped school at Cornell under Professor Fernow's direction meet a definite, practical need, for it is an undeniable fact that the supply of lumber is being diminished beyond safety. Twenty million dollars' worth of native lumber is used annually in the manufacture of wood-pulp alone. Nearly half of the original resources of Washington Territory, the home of supposedly inexhaustible forests, have been used. Indiana once possessed 28,000 square miles covered with valuable timber. It sent timber to the East in large quantities, but now must import 82 per cent, of the lumber it uses. Lumbermen from the Lake States are now taking up timber land on the Pacific coast. Experts agree that if things had been left to take their natural course, a timber famine would have been the probable fate of the next generation or two. The Government with its forest preserves and the awakened landowner with economical methods of timber-cutting will delay and probably avert such a catastrophe, but a future scarcity in lumber is by no means the only bad result of a laissez faire policy regarding forests. The forests are the guardians of the water supply; useful water power, regular irrigation and the absence of dangerous freshets are all dependent on the proper condition of the vegetation of watersheds. It is supposed that the freshet which caused the Johnstown flood of May, 1889, was due in part to the denudation of the Mill Creek watershed, and at the request of the Johnstown Water Company this region has been examined by experts from the Division of Forestry of the United States Department of Agriculture, who have recommended that where the land has not been covered by a second growth, it be planted and that careful protection against fire be given to the whole district. When one considers that similar measures, if taken a generation ago, might have prevented the loss of $10,000,000 worth of property, to say nothing of the tremendous loss of life at the Johnstown disaster, one realizes the importance of forest preservation as a prophylactic against floods. We should teach even the children in the schools Humboldt's warning, "In felling trees growing on the sides and summits of mountains, men under all climates prepare for subsequent generations two calamities at once—a lack of firewood and a lack of water."
These national forest reservations are located in the western third of the country, and agitation is now in progress for similar reservations in Minnesota at the head-waters of the Mississippi and in the Southern Appalachians in the western part of North Carolina. The proposed Minnesota Park would include over 200,000 acres of water surface and over 600,000 acres of land. It would serve as a game preserve, as well as a profitable forest and an assurance to an important water supply. The only objection seems to be on the ground of the expense of purchase of Indian rights, which General Andrews, Chief Forest Warden of the State, estimates as not over $75,000 per year. $2,250,000 has this year been devoted for deepening and improving the Mississippi River. Yet this is dependent on the proper treatment of the very region in question. The passage of the bill was apparently favored by all those competent to judge of the case. It was postponed and will probably be again considered in December. Concerning the proposed Southern Appalachian reservation Prof. J. A. Holmes said at the New York meeting of the American Forestry Association: "Such a reserve, if judiciously managed, will pay a good interest on the investment, besides proving of inestimable value to the people of this country as a public resort for health and pleasure, as a lesson in practical forestry, and as
