Wisconsin and Minnesota are helping to cut the redwood on the Pacific coast, and in each of the great timber regions there is a mingling of lumbermen from several of the others. The effect has been to develop, by constant labor at their trade under widely varying conditions, a force of men who are unequaled for enterprise and skill in their profession; but the system has very largely failed in what is of infinitely greater importance to the permanent welfare of the lumber industry-the upbuilding throughout the country of a stable class of workers in the woods, locally trained and carrying on their work each in his own community. The advantages of such a condition lie in an equitable geographical distribution of labor, in the wholesome influence throughout the country of a class whose means of livelihood is forest work, and in the fact that all the operations of lumbering may in this way be conducted more cheaply than in any other.

The effect upon the prices of lumber which will result from the application of forestry to the lumber industry will be strongly marked. The wide fluctuation characteristic of lumber values today is much more the result of conditions within the industry itself than of variations in the demand for the product of the forest. The uncertainty of available supplies, the lack of true proportion between stumpage values and lumber values, the speculative features which the industry now presents, have all tended to produce an exceedingly uni stable and abnormal fluctuation in the

prices of lumber, with a marked disposition toward rapid increase. Under forestry the speculative element can not exist. The cost of producing timber, plus a legitimate profit, will be the basis upon which the value of it will be fixed. The annual output of the country will be no longer a matter of conjecture, and a steady and normal range of prices for lumber will be the inevitable result.

The influence of forestry upon the lumber industry is not a matter of conjecture. The details will have to work themselves out, but the broad results of conservative forest policy on the part of private owners are plain. The lumber industry in the United States is approaching a crisis. There is no more doubt that conservative methods will be applied to lumbering in this country than there is of the development of irrigation, of regulation of grazing, of the application of improved methods in agriculture, or of any other modification to which private as well as public interests point the way. How long it will be before the results of practical forestry make themselves generally felt it is impossible to foretell; but the fact remains that there will be established in this as in other countries in which conservative lumbering has followed wasteful lumbering a legitimate and permanent industry, characterized, as has been stated, by conditions under which speculation can not exist. Prices will continue normal and steady, and the quantity of timber produced will be the main factor iu regulating consumption.

nual trips of the Aleuts, who live on St Paul, to the barren rock called Walrus Island, which lies a little to the eastward of the extreme northern point of St Paul. In the spring, when the guillemots ("arries," they are called by the natives) and gulls begin to lay eggs on this isolated, and hence protected, rock, the natives go there in their boats and sweep clean a large area. Returning two weeks later they find a vast number of eggs which have not been set upon sufficiently to be spoiled. The photograph The photograph represents the results of such an expedition to Walrus Island. The egg of the guillemot is somewhat larger than a hen's egg, and the contents make an excellent article of food, not quite so palatable to the white man's taste as the hen's egg, but still a most excellent substitute for it in the land where hen's eggs are few and far between.

SKULL OF THE IMPERIAL MAMMOTH

TH

HERE has just been placed on exhibition in the Fossil Mammal Hall of the American Museum of Natural History a superb specimen of the tusks and palate of what may be known as the "imperial mammoth," described in 1858 by Joseph Leidy as Elephas imperator, from a single tooth found in Indiana.

The specimen was discovered in the sands of western Texas many years ago by an amateur collector, and was only recently secured by the American Museum. The upper portions of the skull have been reproduced in plaster, but the entire lower portion of the skull, the large pair of grinding teeth, and the gigantic tusks are complete. The latter fall little short of being the largest elephant tusks thus far described among either living or fossil members of this family. So far as preserved they measure 13 feet 6 inches from the base of the tusks to the tips, and there is at least a foot broken away from the end of

the tip, making the total estimated length 14 feet 6 inches.

On leaving the skull, the tusks (which were undoubtedly used for fighting purposes) in young and middle-aged animals curve downward and outward; then, in old animals, upward and inward until the tips almost meet each other. other. The height of this animal must have been at least 13 feet, 2 feet higher than that of the famous African elephant "Jumbo," the skeleton of which is also in the Museum.

The single molar or grinding tooth is distinguished from that of the mammoth of the extreme north (Elephas primigenius) and that of the Columbian mammoth of the middle United States (Elephas columbi) by its very large size and by the comparatively small number of its enamel plates, which are set widely apart and surrounded by broad bands of cement. In the grinders of the northern mammoth the enamel plates are extremely numerous and closely appressed and there is little or no cement.

This specimen of the imperial mammoth, therefore, adds greatly to our knowledge, and, together with the giant fore limb, which is placed on exhibition near by, gives an impressive idea of the enormous size attained by the early Pleistocene or preglacial elephants in this country.