UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 456 1. Forest Conditions 461 2. Early Forest History 466 3. Development of Forest Policy 479 4. Education and Literature 499 INSULAR POSSESSIONS 504 INDEX i PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. It has been a great surprise and also a great gratification to the author to see the first edition of this volume exhausted within less than two years since its appearance in complete form. The gratification has come especially because of the opportunity thus afforded of revision, improvement in style, and correction of the many inaccuracies which the first edition contained, excusable only by the manner in which (as explained in the preface of the first edition) the volume had come into existence. Only in a few cases has it seemed desirable to expand, since the object of the book is not to be complete, but to give as briefly as possible an oversight over a rather large field. The chapter on France has, however, been entirely re-written and considerably enlarged to meet the just criticisms of reviewers; the excellent work of Huffel, full of historical data, which was not available when the first edition was printed, permitting a clearer and fuller statement to be made. As long as history is in the making, a book of this kind can hardly be brought up to date. This should especially be kept in mind by the reader in regard to the statistics brought in. Since these are only to serve in general to show the magnitude of the interests involved, they may without damage be only approximately accurate, and even of older date. Some of the chapters have been submitted for criticism and corrections to correspondents in the various countries to which they refer. For the kindly assistance of these friends thanks is due from the author. TORONTO, OCTOBER, 1911. B. E. FERNOW. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. This publication is the result of a series of 25 lectures which the writer was invited to deliver before the students of forestry in Yale University as a part of their regular course of instruction during the session of 1904. Circumstances made it desirable, in the absence of any existing textbooks on the subject, to print at once, for the sake of ready reference, the substance of the lectures while they were being delivered. This statement of the manner in which the book came into existence will explain and, it is hoped, excuse the crudities of style, which has been also hampered by the necessity of condensation. The main object was to bring together the information, now scattered and mostly inaccessible to English or American readers: the style has been sacrificed to brevity; it is a book of expanded lecture notes.