The number of forest officers in the several grades on the 1st of January 1908 were: 6 chief inspectors, 26 inspectors, 106 forest supervisors, 41 deputy forest supervisors, 820 forest rangers and 283 forest guards. The total number of employés of the forest service on the same date, including the clerical force, was 2034.

Besides the administration of the national forests, the forest service conducts general investigations, carries on an extensive educational work, and co-operates with private owners who contemplate forest management upon their own tracts. This last work is undertaken because of the need of bringing forestry into practice, the lack of trained foresters outside of the employ of the government, and the lack of information as to how to apply forestry and what returns may be obtained. Co-operation takes the form of advice upon the ground and, on occasion, of the making of working plans. The educational work of the service is performed chiefly through publications, the purpose of which is to spread very widely a knowledge of the importance of forestry to the nation and of the principles upon which its practice rests. The investigations which the service conducts extend from studies of the natural distribution and classification of American forests and of their varied silvicultural problems to statistics of lumber production and laboratory researches which bear upon the economical utilization of forest products. As examples of these researches may be mentioned tests of the strength of timber, studies of the preservative treatment of wood for various uses, wood-pulp investigations and studies in wood chemistry.

Forest Instruction.—Most of the men now in the forest service received their training in the United States. There are several professional schools of forestry. The Yale Forest School, which was opened as a department of Yale University in September 1900, offers a two-years’ graduate course with abundant field work, and also conducts a summer school of forestry, especially adapted to the training of forest rangers and special students, at Milford, Pennsylvania. The university of Michigan and Harvard University also offer a two-years’ graduate course in forestry. The Pennsylvania State College has recently established a four-years’ undergraduate course in forestry. The Biltmore Forest School in North Carolina, the oldest of all these schools, offers a one-year course in technical forestry. A large number of the agricultural colleges give instruction in forestry. Among these are Nebraska, Minnesota, Maine, Michigan, Washington and Mississippi agricultural colleges, the university of Georgia and Iowa State College. Berea College, Kentucky, deserves special mention as a college which has done valuable work in teaching forestry without attempting to turn out professional foresters.

Forestry among the States.—Among the states forestry has hardly reached the stage of practical application on the ground. New York holds 1,500,000 acres of forest land. It has a commission to care for its forest preserve, and to protect the forest land throughout the state from fire. The constitution of the state, however, prohibits the cutting of timber on state land, and thus confines the work entirely to protection of the forest and to the planting of waste areas. Pennsylvania is at present showing the most efficient activity in working out a forest policy. It has state forests of 820,000 acres, a good fire law more and more satisfactorily enforced, and eight nurseries for growing planting material. In 1905, 160,000 white pine seedlings were set out. It has also a school for forest rangers, to be employed on the state forests, and it has just established a state professional school of forestry.

Twenty-six of the states have regularly appointed forest officers, six have carried on studies of forest conditions in co-operation with the forest service, and there is scarcely one which is not actively interested in forestry. Laws, generally good, to prevent damage from forest fires, have been enacted by practically all 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.

Connecticut1,360acres
Hawaii117,532”
Indiana2,000”
Maryland3,540”
Michigan39,000”
Minnesota42,800”
New Jersey2,474”
New York1,439,998”
Pennsylvania820,000”
Wisconsin254,072”

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.