the states, but their enforcement has unfortunately been lax. Public sentiment, however, is making rapid progress. Among the best laws are those of Maine, New Hampshire, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The New York law, for example, provides for the appointment of one or more fire-wardens in each town of the counties in which damage by fire is especially to be feared. In other counties supervisors of towns are ex-officio fire-wardens. A chief fire-warden has general supervision of their work. The wardens, half of the cost of whose services is paid by the state, receive compensation only for the time actually employed in fighting fires. They may command the service of any citizen to assist them. Setting fire to woods or waste lands belonging to the state or to another, if such fire results in loss, is punishable by a fine not exceeding $250 or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both, and damages are provided for the person injured. Since fire is beyond question the most dangerous enemy of forests in the United States, the measures taken against it are of vital importance.
The following table shows the amount of forest land held by the different states, and by the territory of Hawaii:—
Area of State Forest Reservations, 1907.
| Connecticut | 1,360 | acres |
| Hawaii | 117,532 | ” |
| Indiana | 2,000 | ” |
| Maryland | 3,540 | ” |
| Michigan | 39,000 | ” |
| Minnesota | 42,800 | ” |
| New Jersey | 2,474 | ” |
| New York | 1,439,998 | ” |
| Pennsylvania | 820,000 | ” |
| Wisconsin | 254,072 | ” |
Forestry on Private Lands.—The practice of forestry among private owners is of old date. One of the earliest instances was that of Jared Eliot, who, in 1730, began the systematic cutting of timber land to supply charcoal for an iron furnace at Old Salisbury, Connecticut. The successful planting of waste lands with timber trees in Massachusetts dates from about ten years later. But such examples were comparatively rare until recent times. At present the intelligent harvesting of timber with a view to successive crops, which is forestry, is much more common than is usually supposed. Among farmers it is especially frequent. It was begun among lumbermen by the late E.S. Coe, of Bangor, Maine, who made a practice of restricting the cut of spruce from his forests to trees 10, 12 or sometimes even 14 in. in diameter, with the result that much of his land yielded, during his life, a second crop as plentiful as the first. Many owners of spruce lands have followed his example, but until very recently without improving upon it. Systematic forestry on a large scale among lumbermen was begun in the Adirondacks during the summer of 1898 on the lands of Dr W.S. Webb and Hon. W.C. Whitney, of a combined area of over 100,000 acres, under the superintendence of the then Division of Forestry. In these forests spruce, maple, beech and birch predominate, but the spruce alone is at present of the first commercial importance. The treatment is a form of the selection system. Under it a second crop of equal yield would be ripe for the axe in thirty-five years. Spruce and pine are the only trees cut. The work had been executed, at least up to the year 1902, with great satisfaction to the owners and the lumbering contractors, as well as to the decided benefit of the forest. The lumbering is regulated by the following rules, and competent inspectors are employed to see that they are rightly carried out: (1) No trees shall be cut which are not marked. (2) All trees marked shall be cut. (3) No trees shall be left lodged in the woods, and none shall be overlooked by the skidders or haulers. (4) All merchantable logs which are as large as 6 in. in diameter at the small end must be utilized. (5) No stumps shall be cut more than 6 in. higher than the stump is wide. (6) No spruce shall be used for bridges, corduroy, skids, slides, or for any purpose except building camps, dams or booms, unless it is absolutely necessary on account of lack of other timber. (7) All merchantable spruce used for skidways must be cut into logs and hauled out. (8) Contractors must not do any unnecessary damage to young growth in lumbering; and if any is done, they must discharge the men who did it.
These two instances of forestry have been most useful and effective among lumbermen and other owners of forest land in the north-east. Among those which have followed their example are the Berlin Mills Paper Company in northern New Hampshire, the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company in northern Michigan, and the Delaware and Hudson Railroad Company in New York, all of which have employed professional foresters.
The most notable instance of forestry in the south is on the estate of George W. Vanderbilt at Biltmore, N.C. This was the first case of systematic forestry under regular working plans in the United States. It was begun in 1891 on about 4000 acres, and has since been extended until it now covers about 100,000 acres. A professional forester with a corps of trained rangers under him is in charge of the work. The Pennsylvania Railroad has recently employed a trained forester and several assistants and has undertaken systematic forestry on a large scale.
The effect of the work of the forest service in assisting private owners is evidenced by the fact that down to the year 1908 670 wood lots and timber tracts had been examined by agents of the forest service, of which 250 were tracts over 400 acres in extent, and planting plans had been made for 436 owners covering a total area of 80,000 acres. Expert advice is also given to wood lot owners upon application by many of the state foresters.
American Practice.—The conditions under which forestry is practised in Europe and in America differ so widely that rules which are received as axiomatic in the one must often be rejected in the other. Among these conditions in America are the highly developed and specialized methods and machinery of lumbering, the greater facilities for transportation and consequent greater mobility of the lumber trade, the vast number of small holdings of forest land, and the enormous supply of low-grade wood in the timbered regions. High taxes on forest properties, cut-over as well as virgin, notably in the north-western pineries, and the firmly established habits of lumbermen, are factors of great importance. From these and other considerations it follows that such generally accepted essentials of European methods of forestry as a sustained annual yield, a permanent force of forest labourers, a permanent road system and the like, are in most cases utterly inapplicable in the United States at the present day in private forestry. Methods of forest management, to find acceptance, must there conform as closely as possible to existing methods of lumbering. Rules of marked simplicity, the observance of which will yet secure the safety of the forest, must open the way for more refined methods in the future. For the present a periodic or irregular yield, temporary means of transport, constantly changing crews, and an almost total ignorance of the silvics of all but a few of the most important trees—all combine to enforce the simplest silvicultural treatment and the utmost concentration of purpose on the two main objects of forestry, which are the production of a net revenue and the perpetuation of the forest. Such concentration has been followed in practice by complete success.
The forests with which the American forester deals are rich in species, usually endowed with abundant powers of reproduction, and, over a large part of their range, greatly dependent for their composition and general character upon the action of forest fires. Of the commercially valuable trees there may be said to be, in round numbers, a hundred out of a total forest flora of about 500 species, but many trees not yet of importance in the lumber trade will become so hereafter, as has already happened in many cases. The attention of the forester must usually be concentrated upon the growth and reproduction of a single species, and never of more than a very few. Thus the silvicultural problems which must be solved in the practice of forestry in America are fortunately less complicated than the presence of so many kinds of trees in forests of such diverse types would naturally seem to indicate.
The forest fire problem is one of the most difficult with which the American forester has to deal. It is probable that forest
