Items of Interest February 21, 1914 Issue

Items of Interest

The rivers and harbors appropriation bill carries a grand total of forty-three million dollars for waterway improvements throughout the country. The bill, in addition to the large number of appropriations for continuing work already in progress in many states, provides for numerous new projects, chief among them being the New York harbor, for which thirteen million four hundred thousand dollars is provided as the maximum cost for developing the East river and removing Hell Gate and other ledges there that threaten navigation. It also provides for the purchase of the Chesapeake and Delaware canal between Chesapeake and Delaware bays, for one million three hundred thousand dollars, and its development and enlargement to accommodate ocean commerce, with seven million dollars' straight appropriation for improvement of the Mississippi from its mouth to Rock Island.

Only three states, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, may indulge in spring shooting of migratory birds this year, and that only for a part of the season. Before the end of the present month the ban will have been placed upon those states also, and then in the entire United States spring shooting of migratory birds will be forbidden. The new law went into effect in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina only a few days ago, and these were the last of the states that far north to apply it. The spring of the present year will be the first time since the country was settled by white men that birds have been permitted to go to their northern grounds without molestation.

A total of one hundred and six million dollars for the Appalachian and Atlantic regions, including New England and states to the south, is called for in the revised waterways bill introduced into the Senate by Senator Newlands of Nevada. For the first year after the passage of the bill, ten million dollars is to be appropriated for river conservation in the territory mentioned, this appropriation to be renewed annually for ten years. A million dollars is appropriated to be expended as provided in the Weeks Appalachian national forest act for fire protection and the prevention and extermination of insect pests. For the acquisition of forest lands by the national forest rescrvation commission as directed by the Weeks act, five million dollars is called for.

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