WITH the spring of 1903, the Government

began a forest-making movement that is in many ways the most important ever undertaken. It is the carrying out of plans that have been under consideration for years, and which have had the careful study of the forestry bureau in every detail. It is proposed to solve the serious problem of forest destruction by growing new supplies under government care and in parts of the nation where as yet there is nothing but open plain, as well as on the cut-over lands of the once timbered region.

The most interesting feature of this vast undertaking is in the sand hills of western Nebraska, where it is proposed to have wide, undulating reaches of drifted sand succeeded by the waving green of a pine forest,-a seeming impossibility.

WESTERN SAND LANDS NOT HOPELESS.

The basis of the theory upon which the Government experiment is proceeding is that once that region was the bottom of a sea; that, as it is the lowest point for a large area, and the soil is especially adapted to certain kinds of trees, it has, in catching the drainage of the surrounding plateaus, the conditions needed for the development of a forest. Western sand lands may be dry on top, and the surface may drift in

clouds, but beneath is a damp subsoil that retains the moisture of spring through the long sunshine-flooded summer. It has been found that certain kinds of pine have roots which, going far below the surface, tap the moisture stored in this substratum and are sustained thriftily. Prof. E. A. Braniff, of the Yale School of For estry, one of the nation's foremost authorities, says: "The minimum rainfall under which trees will grow is reckoned at twenty inches, and under such conditions they are usually dwarfed, scrubby, and unfit for timber. But in the sand hills the bull pine has shown a rapid and even growth and promises to develop into a fine tree." Growths of from fifteen to eighteen feet have been secured under these seemingly poor conditions in ten years.

THE RESERVES IN THE SAND-HILL REGION.

The sand-hill section, comprising about onefourth of the State, is almost surrounded by a rich farming country, and is used for grazing. Poor as is the pasture, the cattlemen cling to it, and the Government is making arrangements for their coöperation to prevent the burning off of the experimental forests. The two reserves created in this section comprise 211,000 acres,one between the Dismal and the Loup rivers of 86,000 acres, and one between the Niobrara and

amounts, are to be united into one great forest. It will, indeed, be a marvelous undertaking and, if successful, will change the face of the plains.

DANGERS OF FIRE AND CATTLE.

The close pasturage of the sand lands not only kills the grass, but it gives the winds an opportunity for cutting great holes, known as "blowouts," in the surface. These injure the grass for many rods by covering the tops with the drift.

The cattlemen promise to coöperate with the Government in this attempt, and to refrain from close pasturing. The forest fires of the mountain regions will also be prevented by greater vigilance on the part of the guards, if such be possible. Oregon and Washington, according to the national Bureau of Forestry, lost last year thirteen million dollars' worth of timber, eight million dollars' worth of which represented salable material. In California, Colorado, and Wisconsin, on the timber lands, there rage every

year destructive fires, most of which, with a little precaution, could be prevented.

It seems strange that such wastefulness should be permitted in one section when in another, on the plains, there is so great a demand for trees. Kansas, for instance, maintains a forestry station in the far southwest part of the State, and distributes annually two million trees to farmers and stockmen, free of cost. These are mostly osage orange, mulberry, and cottonwood, with honev locust and box elder also frequently called

for. The railroads are finding the growing of trees along the right-of-way profitable, both for ties and for snow breaks, and several Western roads are setting out this sort of protection, using millions of cuttings.

THE BAD TIMBER CLAIM SYSTEM.

For many years the forest extension in the middle West was confined to the "timber claims," on which every settler was given certain preemption privileges for keeping alive ten acres of trees for eight years. when, if there were alive sufficient of the saplings to satisfy the land office, he received a deed. Then he was at liberty to let the trees die,-and he often did, or so neglected them that there were left, after another half decade, only a few straggling, wind-bent bushes that made a pitiful picture in the far-reaching land

scape.

WHAT IS TO BECOME OF "LOGGED-OFF LAND?

There is in the coast region a vast amount of "logged-off" land which has been robbed of its timber and now lies desolate, fit only for grazing. The fact that the underbrush in these untended areas is the source of many destructive forest fires has caused a widespread discussion of the best means of rehabilitating the lands with another forest growth to succeed the one now gone.

One of the plans suggested is to remit the taxes or reduce them, as an inducement toward reforestation of the lands; but a special report of the Forestry Bureau says that, even considering the value of the land at only one dollar an acre, "The cost of holding a quarter section for fifty years would be $1,742, or $10.90 an acre.

Under such conditions few men will hold loggedoff land. The property reverts to the State for delinquent taxes and, still considered worthless and wholly unprotected, it is burned off again and again until it becomes a desert." The Pacific Coast Lumber Manufacturers' Association advises the using of burned-off land for pasture, and says it does not think much of projects for replanting such lands.

ONLY WOOD ENOUGH FOR ONE MORE GENERATION.

Professor Fernow, of the Cornell School of Forestry, said recently that at the present rate. of consumption the lumber supply of the nation will not last another thirty years. If none of the logged off lands are reforested, to what source shall the building trade look for its supply after that time? To the redeemed prairie reaches? It is doubtful if even the most enthusiastic believers in the latter method of growing forest areas expect any such generous out

come.

It is for this reason that the problem becomes the more important, and the task of the forestry bureaus of the Government and of the several States is of direct industrial interest, as well as bearing a close relation to climatic conditions.

For three months, beginning last November, a squad of from ten to fifteen men, under a competent leader, spent its time reseeding the mountain regions of southern California, where fires had denuded the surface. The country, alarmed by the decreasing water supply, asked for this work, and assistance was given by the towns of the section visited in carrying on the replanting.

Pine, in varieties suited to the moisture likely to be secured, was generally planted. On March 1, this year, it was announced that the seeds planted in November had begun to germinate. and that there was promise of a successful growth over the areas treated. In a few years the bare mountain sides will be clothed again with green.

THE INTEREST OF THE IRRIGATIONIST IN FORESTRY.

The denuding of the mountain regions means a loss to the irrigationists of the plains that is almost immeasurable. If the snows be not held in the hills, the streams that take their long slow course across the plains will fail in summer, when their supply of moisture is essential to cropraising. With the rapid extension of ditches in every part of the West, and with the added impetus of the new government assistance through the utilization of land-sale incomes, the water supply is certain to be tested to its limit. Already interstate conflicts have arisen concerning the inadequacy of certain streams. If the mountain snows rush to the sea with the first warm sun of spring, the lack will be yet greater.

Under these conditions, it is little wonder that the Western States that have not yet lost the bulk of their forests should be anxious for restrictive laws that will restrict. If the sand hills of Nebraska can be transformed in the next quarter century into two hundred thousand acres of luxuriant pines and cedars from ten to eighteen feet high, it will be to a large degree a solution of the matter.

THE

HE publication of Darwin's account of the voyage of the Beagle, in 1839, made Patagonia's general features known to the world, and since that date few explorers have added anything of material value to the observations of the great naturalist. During the last decade, however, the researches of the Argentine and Chilean boundary commissions have been in progress, while the earlier efforts of the Argentine geographer Moreno had resulted at least in a clearer mapping of the country; but Americans should take especial interest and pride in the magnificent work of one of our own countrymen, achieved under great difficulties and made possible only by the munificence of the graduates and friends of Princeton University. Mr. J. B. Hatcher led the three Princeton expeditions to southern Patagonia during the years 1896-99. His purposes were purely scientific. Rumors of sensational discoveries in that part of the world had roused the interest of geologists in Patagonian paleontology, and it was primarily as a paleontologist that Mr. Hatcher made his explorations.

Fortunately, this intrepid explorer was interested in the life of to-day as well as in pre

* Reports of the Princeton University Expeditions to Patagonia, 1896-1899. J. B. Hatcher in charge. Edited by William B. Scott. Volume I. Narrative and Geography (J. Pierpont Morgan Publication Fund). Princeton, N. J.: The University.

historic life, and with the aid of his camera he succeeded in obtaining and bringing back to civilization some unequaled pictures of the few scattered human beings who roam over the vast wastes of what has hitherto remained the most sparsely peopled region on the known globe. Other photographs secured by Mr. Hatcher, some of which are reproduced on this and the following pages, represent the natural scenery of the country. Darwin and all later travelers have dwelt on the vastness and monotony of the Patagonian plains, but these pictures tell us that it is not wholly a land of dead level. Here and there the traveler encounters rugged peaks towering far above the plain, while the river cañons, to judge from the photographs, are not less interesting than those of our own Southwest, and the glaciers rival those of Alaska in grandeur. Still, it must be confessed that the impressions of solitude and utter desolation that so powerfully colored Darwin's description of the country have enough to justify them in the marked characteristics of the Patagonian landscape as set forth by subsequent observers, Mr. Hatcher included. Much of the region immediately north of Punta Arenas, in southern Patagonia, is described by the 'ast-named writer as resembling the sand-hills of western Nebraska. "The trail winds in and out among low, rounded hills, separated by small ponds and broad stretches of meadow lands."

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one hundred miles long, but none of which has been thoroughly explored. Several of the mountain lakes are described as very beautiful. Concerning the numerous salt lakes which abound on the plains, Mr. Hatcher holds the "residual" theory,-i.e., that the salt water remained after the subsidence of the sea, or, rather, after the elevation of the land,-while by others the view is maintained that these were originally freshwater lakes, that their outlets were gradually cut off, and that the salt resulted from evaporation.

In more aspects than one, this southern extremity of our hemisphere, as pictured by Mr. Hatcher and other travelers, reminds us of South Africa, a land with which we can all claim acquaintance since the Boer war made its features known to the uttermost parts of the earth. The seasons, for one thing, correspond very closely in the two countries. Winter in Patagonia and South Africa falls in our summer months, and vice versa. There is some overlapping of vegetation, however. Thus, Mr. Hatcher found a flower in bloom near Cape Fairweather (Lat. 51° 30') on July 4-a date corresponding to January 4 in the northern continent. But for the most part, the months of May-October are wintry enough, and the wind-swept Patagonian plains, always desolate, must be more forbidding than ever when covered with snow; yet it was under just these conditions that Mr. Hatcher, with a single human companion, passed many dreary months. Other seasons bring compensations to the traveler who can live the year through in those

Tres He-mance

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70° from

Mr. Hatcher made a special study of the Patagonian lakes, some of which are from fifty to

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