The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-08-04
THE FOREST PROBLEM
GOVERNMENT EXPERTS INVES. TIGATING TREE CULTURE.
Enormous Demand for Forest PrO- duets-Ths Country Facing the aues- ton of Preserving the Supply.

ton of Preserving the Supply.
 Tn northern Maine, where thousands of square miles are covered by the primeval forest, United States govern ment experts will soon begin some new studies of trees and tree life. and the lessons learned are likely to be of far reaching importance, for America is face to face with the problem of pre- serving wooded areas. Talk of plant ing trees seems strange to men who re- call the days when the forests of the United States were so vast that the question of their disappearance was seldom, if ever, raised. But times have changed and while the forests have dwindled to make room for the clearing of the pioneer and the farms of his de- scendants, the uses to which forest pro- ducts are put have been greatly diver sified and the demand has been enor- mously increased.
 To meet the new conditions American colleges are establishing courses in for estry problems, state legislatures are passing stringent laws designed to pre- vent destructive forest fires, and the great industries to which timber is a vital necessity are contributing to the experimental work For the work just undertaken by the bureau of forestry in northern Maine plots of land have been selected in typical timber regions where best flourish the pine, spruce, hemlock, poplar, chestnut, etc. Some of these plots will be left untouched by the axe of the woodman, while others will be cleared in order to obtain sta- tistics on the renewal of growth.
 DEMANDS ON FOREST.
 New demands upon the forests are constantly being made which can be met only by the supply of carefully se- lected material. When the electric light, the electric railway and the tele- phone were made practical utilities, few thought of their development as bearing upon the question of forestry. Yet the lighting of thousands of towns and cities by electricity. the building of hundreds of electricic railways, and the extension of the telephone system to every state and territory in the Un- ion, have made it necessary to trans- plant whole, forests of trees, and place them along streets and highways in the form of the poles, which carry the wires. Electricity has been used com rnercially for lighting and power pur- poses just a quarter of century, but in that time the industry has had a marvellous development In the United States to-day are about two thousand towns and cities with population of twenty-five hundred or more, and more than tIlree-quarters of these places have electric light and power stations from which radiate the wires carried on poles which, were they growing to- gether in the form of living trees, would make forest many hundreds of square miles in area. And electric lighting is not confined to the larger towns. Two thousand places or less than twenty-five hundred population enjoy it's advantages.
 Similar to the growth of this great industry has been the development of the electric railways and to support the trolley wires over the sixteen thousand miles of these roads means the cutting of still other forests of trees. Wooden poles are used on about thirteen thou sand miles of electric railway. For the electric railways and to support the trolley wires are held aloft by span wire construction, requiring the plac-i ing of poles on both sides of the tracks. The country through. the average num- Der of poles to the mile in electric rail-. way construction is about fifty. A lit- tie figuring will show the enormous number of trees which have been cut to support trolley and feed wires, and the for renewals are frequently necessary and new roads are constantly under construction.
 A third great utility developed in the past twenty-five years is the telephone. To-day the telephone wires reach to twenty-six thousand cities, towns and villages in the United States, and long distance lines extend for great stretch- es through forests and over mountain ranges. The system includes nearly four million miles of wire, of which nearly two-thirds is carried on poles The toll lines alone aggregate over one nuuuTeQ anu lHlfty IIlOuSdHu IlIlSS WlIIt poles averaginb thirty-eight to the mile, or about five million in all, to say nothing of the other millions in the lo-' cal plants. The task of providing the enormous number of poles needed every year is attended with constantly in creasing difficulties. In some of the wooded sections of the country no trees available for poles are left. In other regions they, are fast disappearing. The telephone pole is looked upon with such tender selicitude that elaborate studies are being made with view to prolonging its life. Exhaustive experi- ments are now being conducted by the bureau of forestry to determine the best means of seasoning poles and treating them with conservatives.
 QUALITY IN USE.
 The tree which is suitable for use inI the manufacture of poles represents the I aristocracy of forest growth It must be straight and sound and of certain woods. The demand for it has given rise to a new occupation for the man skilled in woodcraft. The locker is abroad in the forests. He is man who prospects in the woods for trees suitable for poles. The name comes from northern Michigan, where much of the timber used for this purpose is cut. There are establishments in Mich j1af1 where if is not uncommon to Sap