Items of Interest October 30, 1915 Issue

Items of Interest

The Massachusetts Forestry Association, to encourage reclamation, reforestation, and development in the state, has proposed a town forest contest. Fifty acres will be planted to three year old white pine transplants for the city or town which meets the requirements in the rules of the contest and obtains the highest number of points under stated conditions. The rules provide that the city or town entering must own at least one hundred acres of land and have it set aside officially as a "town forest." At least ten cities or towns must have entered the contest before the prize will be awarded, and all entries must be made before July 1, 1916. The points will be estimated on the following basis: area of the tract or tracts of land comprising the "forest, ten points; advantages for lumbering, and water and soil protection, twenty points; possibilities for recreation and esthetic development, fifteen points; fire protection, twenty-five points; general improvement,—roads, fences, reforestation according to modern methods and plans for development,—thirty points.

According to a bulletin issued by the department of agriculture, there has been an extraordinary increase in the water-fowl population of the United States during the past two years, and this increase, the government officials assert, is due almost entirely to the passage by Congress of the so-called migratory bird law. But even with this increase in the ranks of the mallard, the blue-winged teal, the canvasback, and the swan, the gross number of water-fowl to be found in the various states is estimated as not more than 10 per cent of those that existed before the extraordinary increase in recent years in rapid transportation facilities. For this reason a concerted movement has been put on foot by organizations representing sportsmen, farmers, conservationists, and stock breeders to have the provisions of the law extended in every possible way.

Further steps in the revision of its municipal program and model city charter, to keep pace with the rapid advances made in municipal government in the United States within a decade or more, are to be among the important features of the twenty-first annual meeting of the National Municipal League, to be held at Dayton, Ohio, about the middle of November. The league's program is based on the city manager plan of government. This league is composed largely of specialists from all parts of the United States who have made a study of various features of city government and administration, and who bring together and compare the results of their researches, both at the annual meetings of the league and in the pages of the National Municipal Review.

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