"I'm one now," said Wilbur elatedly.
"You're not, you're only a cub yet," corrected his uncle sharply; "don't let your enthusiasm run away with your good sense. You are no more a Forester yet than a railroad bill-clerk is a transportation expert."
"All right, uncle," said Wilbur, "I'll swallow my medicine and take that all back. I'm not even the ghost of a Forester—yet."
"You will meet the real article to-night. As I told you, the District Foresters are East for a conference, and this lecture is given before the Forestry Association. So you will have a good chance of sizing up the sort of men you are likely to be with."
"Will the Forest Supervisors be there, too?"
"I should imagine not. There may be one or two in town. But the Supervisors alone would make quite a gathering if they were all here. There are over a hundred, are there not? You ought to know."
"Just a hundred and forty-one now—about one to each forest."
"And there are only six District Foresters?"
"Yes. One is in Montana, one in Colorado, one in New Mexico, one in Utah, one in California, and one in Oregon. And they have under their charge, so I learned to-day, nearly two hundred million acres of land, or, in other words, territory larger than the whole state of Texas and five times as large as England and Wales."
"I had forgotten the figures," said the geologist. "That gives each District Forester a little piece of land about the size of England to look after. And they can tell you, most of them, on almost every square mile of that region, approximately how much marketable standing timber may be found there, what kinds of trees are most abundant, and in what proportion, and roughly, how many feet of lumber can be cut to the acre. It's always been wonderful to me. That sort of thing takes learning, though, and you've got to dig, Wilbur, if you want to be a District Forester some day."