er than it is to bring back fertility
to a barren soil. It is easy to care for what is left and to replant and
renew the growth, and even to do this better and more quickly and with
more and quicker profit than nature has done it. It is easy, too, by a
wise and practical use of the forests that are left, to so husband them
as to take regular harvests from them as the farmer regularly harvests
his fields or selects the fatlings from his flocks. He does not gather
in all these at one fell swoop, taking the fat and the lean and the
young and the old, as the fisherman gathers all into his nets, and as
the lumberman has felled the woods, but he selects those that are ripe
and carefully rears the rest until they are ready. Had the timber been
culled in this way from the forests year by year there would have been a
periodical harvest, and as the mature trees were cut out a new growth
would spring up. But, on the contrary, as in the old fable, the goose
has been killed for its golden eggs, and the source of a lasting profit
has been recklessly sacrificed.

Fortunately the land is left, and can be put to its proper use as soon
as it can be controlled. And still fortunately, by a wise
administration, the forests may be made a profitable source of public
income, instead of, as heretofore, the prey of the spoilers. It is
useless to complain of past mistakes. They have been, as we have pointed
out, mere incidents of our system, and possibly unavoidable. But the
time has come when the system must be changed, and the necessity for a
change has become so apparent that it can not be long delayed. It is not
only the commerce of the country that must suffer by a continuance of
the system, but agriculture suffers still more; and it is not only the
public who will gain by a change, but the example will be followed by
the farmers, who will doubtless soon learn to take care of their own
timber lands and plant more, and so the benefit will be general.
Besides, the farmers will not be long in discovering the profit in
growing timber, and would plant groves as one of the most profitable
crops that could be grown upon their rougher lands, or as a resting and
restorative crop for their worn soil.

* * * * *

Before the New York Academy of Science a few days ago, Professor Albert
R. Leeds gave some "facts gathered from eight years of personal
inspection as to the alleged destruction of the Adirondack forests." He
s