A work of enormous magnitude which has now begun is planting on the national forests. At present, with low stumpage prices and incomplete utilization of forest products, clear cutting with subsequent planting is not practicable. There are, however, many million acres of denuded land within the national forests which require planting. Such planting is still confined chiefly to watersheds which supply cities and towns with water. The first planting was done in 1892, in California. Since then similar work has been done on city watersheds in Colorado, Utah, Idaho and New Mexico. Other plantations are in the Black Hills national forest, where large areas of cut-over and burned-over land are entirely without seed trees, and in the sandhill region of Nebraska. Up to 1908 about 2,000,000 seedlings had been planted, on over 2000 acres--a small beginning, but the work was entirely new and presented many hard problems. The nursery operations of the forest service are concentrated at seven stations, located in southern California, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico (2), Utah and Idaho, where stock is raised for local planting and for shipment elsewhere. These nurseries are small. Their annual productive capacity is between 8,000,000 and 10,000,000 seedlings. Each nursery is practically an experimental forest-planting station, at which a large variety of species are grown and various methods are tried. The organization of the administrative work of the national forests is by single forests. On the 1st of January 1908 the total number of forests was 165 with a total area of 162,023,190 acres (on April 7, 1909, the numbers were 146 national forests in the U.S. with 167,672,467 acres, besides two in Alaska with 26,761,626 and one in Porto Rico with 65,950 acres). In charge of each forest is a forest supervisor. Under the supervisors are forest rangers and forest guards, whose duties include patrol, marking timber and scaling logs, enforcing the regulations and conducting some of the minor business arising from the use of the forests. Guards are temporary employes; rangers are employed by the year. The supervisors report directly to and receive instructions from the central office at Washington. In this office there are four branches--operation, grazing, silviculture and products--each of which directs that part of the work which belongs to it, dealing directly with the supervisor. For inspection purposes, however, the forests are separated into six districts, in each of which is located a chief inspector with a corps of assistants. The inspectors are without administrative authority, but assist by their counsel the supervisors, and through inspection reports keep the Washington office informed of the condition of all lines of administrative work in progress. Administrative officers alternate frequently between field and office duties.