ITEMS OF INTEREST August 22, 1908 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Thirty-nine young graduates of nine American Forest Schools have lately received appointments as forest assistants in the forest service and have been assigned to positions for the present field season. The new appointees are drawn from the various forest schools as follows: Yale, 18; Biltmore, 5; University of Minnesota, 4; University of Michigan, 4; Michigan Agricultural College, 3; Harvard, 2; Cornell, 1; University of Iowa, 1, and University of Nebraska, 1. They have secured their appointments as a result of passing the regular civil service examination, which is the only avenue to employment as a forester under the Government. In addition to these graduates of forest schools, fifteen other candidates passed the examination. Twenty-two of the new appointees are already at work on various national forests, taking part in their administration, and seventeen have been assigned to different projects connected with the technical study of silviculture. The Government pays them $1,000 a year at the start.

With a view to bringing about better social, sanitary, and economic conditions on American farms, President Roosevelt has requested four experts on country life to make an investigation into the whole matter and to report to him with recommendations for improvements. The report and recommendations, with any additional recommendations which the President himself may desire to make, will be incorporated in a message which the President will send to Congress probably early next year. The men President Roosevelt has asked to act as an investigating committee are Prof. L. H. Bailey of the New York College of Agriculture, Henry Wallace of Wallace's Farmer, Des Moines, Ia., Pres. Kenyon L. Butterfield of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, Gifford Pinchot of the United States Forest Reserve, and Walter H. Page, editor of The World's Work, New York.

Suits against no less than four thousand defendants in the Federal Circuit Court for the eastern district of Oklahoma, at Muskogee, have been brought to set aside title to lands that were obtained of members of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians when, as the Government alleges, the Indians had no right to part with their property. The Five Civilized Tribes include the Cherokees, the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, the Creeks, and Seminoles. Many people who are prominent locally are made defendants. The proceedings have served to bring out clearly the methods that have been used by the shrewd land-seekers to outwit the Indians in securing title to good land.

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