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Show NATIONAL FORESTS. The note of warning which was sounded during the administration of President Roosevelt, calling attention to the need of conservation of our national resources, has not been without good results. The warning is, to use a homely expression, simply one which says we cannot eat our cake and have it. A pamphlet recently issued by the bureau of forestry for-estry of ihe department of agriculture gives some interesting information regarding the national forests for-ests of the United States and the work that has been accomplished under the direction of the bureau, j Tbe first stcP the line of forest reserves was taken I j:' 1SIU, and President Harrison set aside the first rr serve. President Cleveland set aside thirteen reserves re-serves in S!)7, and presidents since then have added to the total area until in 1905 there were sixty-two reserves, with an area of 03,000,000 acres, j Mr. fiifford Pinchot. forester of the United Stales, under whose authority the pamphlet referred to is issued, estimates that more than 35 per cent of the total area of the country is in forests, an area ..f Cy90,000 aCres. We should have thought it was less than that. In large areas of the middle west the forests have been all but entirely dostrmwl Fires have devastated incalculable areas in different states. We are better off than our past prodigality would poem to justify. Xearly seven hundred million mil-lion acres of forest is a pretty good nucleus to start with in the effort to conserve and reforest. Mr. Pinehot points cut that before so large a part of the forests were destroyed they were probably prob-ably the richest in the world, and he believes with , proper care they are capable of becoming so again. It is interesting to learn that some of the railroad corporations have taken i;p the matter of future supplies of rrnber by establishing private reserves. With federal and state encouragement private individuals indi-viduals have taken up the work of conservation. It is an encouraging indication that our forest lands will be intelligently locked after and that future demands will be met. Cut of ns great importance as that is the fact that an interest in trees for the trees alone has been awakened in the public mind. We need the timber from the trees, but of equal im- ' X'ortance is the tree itbelf and the woods, Clods tem- I - f . j pics, wherein the people may enjoy that communion j with nature that is offered in no other Avay. I |