FORESTRY.
The people of the country are rapidly awakening to the immense economic importance of our forests and to the dangerous rapidity with which they are being exterminated. Germany and other countries have long maintained strict forestry systems and schools for foresters; our own resources were so great that there seemed to be no need of economy. But we are now told that the forests under present methods will scarcely last for thirty years, and there is a general demand for more knowledge and better management. In the past few years the Bureau of Forestry under the national government has grown rapidly, the appropriation for investigation having increased from $80,000 in 1901 to $254,000 for the present year. Schools of forestry have been established at Cornell, Yale and Harvard—we may be sure that New York state will soon repent its attitude toward the' school at Cornell—and there is a general awakening of interest in the whole subject.
Forest Map of the United States.
Under these circumstances a little book recently issued by Ginn and Company, entitled 'First Book of Forestry,' is more deserving of notice than other works of greater pretensions. The author, Mr. Filbert Roth, of the Bureau of Forestry, is an authority on the subject, and is able to put it in a simple and interesting form. The book is just what is needed as a tract, and it is to be hoped that it will be widely read.
