have been appreciated for some years by a few of the hardier spirits, and special ski and toboggan courses have been made available for such pastimes. The annual excursions of the Colorado Mountain Club into the superb Fern Lake region, with ski running and other athletic exhibitions lasting from 3 to 10 days, are doing much to center public attention on Colorado's winter offerings. As a winter resort Mount Rainier has possibilities that will eventually make it famous in the Northwest. Following the first successful ascent of the peak in winter, accomplished on February 14 last by Jean Landry, a French alpinist and party, and after nearly two weeks spent at that time in the park, Mr. Landry expressed the opinion that in 20 years of almost continual travel throughout the mountainous regions of Europe he had seen nothing as striking as the winter scenery in Mount Rainier Park, and no place so well adapted naturally to winter sports as Paradise Valley, not even barring the celebrated and famous St. Moritz in Switzerland. The Mountaineer's Club, of Washington, for some years has made annual winter pilgrimages to the Paradise Valley, which always arouse the greatest interest throughout the country. A special effort is being made to stimulate recognition of the winter sport possibilities in Lafayette Park in Maine. New England has always been noted for a climate which has given it supremacy in the field of winter sports in the East. As a result of the spreading knowledge of the offerings of Lafayette National Park, larger crowds are reported each winter. Here, after Christmas, the lakes and ponds freeze solidly, and surrounded by the high flanking ramparts of the mountains, whose slopes afford splendid ski courses, the devotees of skating and ice boating, of snowshoeing and skiing, find their most thrilling and satisfying experiences. There are a number of the parks which on account of their favorable location are open all the year round. Grand Canyon, Hot Springs, and Hawaii are the present all-year parks. The proposed All-year Park in New Mexico, for the creation of which legislation has passed the Senate, if created would furnish another park available all the months of the year. The completion of the Middle Fork Road into the Sequoia National Park will enable motorists to drive among the snow-covered masses of the big trees of California and furnish new and thrilling experiences for winter journeys. FOREST Fires. Fortunately this year, as last, climatic conditions were such that forest fires of any extent in the national parks were not in evidence. With many hundreds of thousands of acres of invaluable park forests, fires caused by lightning or through the carelessness of visitors are bound to occur annually, but we will congratulate ourselves if they are never more extensive than in the past season. Yellowstone, Glacier, Mount Rainier, Sequoia, Yosemite, Rocky Mountain, and Grand Canyon reported small fires, but all were extinguished before irreparable loss occurred. The heavy snows of the past winter had thoroughly saturated the ground, and when the lowlands had been dried out the highlands where the parks are situated still retained sufficient moisture to withstand the spread of fires. Two years ago Congress inaugurated the policy of granting a contingent fund of $25,000 annually to defray the cost of combating fires within the various national parks and monuments. Prior to that time when fires occurred it was necessary to use funds provided and needed for administration, protection, maintenance, and construction work. Such park funds spent were later reimbursed by deficiency appropriations, as happened, for instance, in Glacier Park several years ago, when $70,000 of an $85,000 appropriation had to be used in fighting the terrible conflagrations that raged that year. Very little of the necessary park work was possible until some months afterwards when deficiency appropriations restored the money spent; by that time the winter season had set in and no work was done until the opening of the spring season, when all work had to be crowded into a few weeks before June 30, the end of the fiscal year. Under the present system the contingent amount provided seems sufficient to cover our fire-fighting expenditures in normal years. Furthermore, with the development of roads and trails into yet comparatively inaccessible portions of the parks, the fire hazard should diminish from year to year. The knowledge that park funds needed for regular administration and upkeep work need not be touched for emergency fire work is conducive to the greatest efficiency in our work. VISUAL EDUCATIONAL WORK. The numerous unsolicited requests for motion-picture film, lantern slides, and photographs received from persons in this country, Canada, South America, Europe, and even the Orient, indicate the demand for showings of our national park scenery for visual educational work, and I earnestly look forward to the time when this service will be authorized and granted an appropriation to conduct a visual educational distribution service. Visual education is being included more and more in the curriculum of schools and colleges, and the national parks, the beauty spots of the United States, serve as exceedingly popular subjects for courses in physical geography and like studies. Several instances of this will prove interesting. Miss Chapin's School for Girls, in New York City, after trying the experiment last year of substituting our lantern slides of park scenes for textbooks, with their course in physical geography, decided that the slides were most practical and continued their use this year. The Hathaway Brown School, of Cleveland, used our slides with their courses and they also staged a "national park week," showing lantern slides and decorating the class rooms with large pictures of park scenes. This service has never had an appropriation for the purchase of film, slides, or photographs for general distribution. Practically all of the film used by this service was received through the now discontinued requirement in the permits to take motion pictures in the parks, whereby the permittee agreed to furnish the service with one positive print of all film taken. When this stipulation was excluded from the permits, over two years ago, the source of supply of our film was cut off and as the film on hand has become worn out through constant use, the distribution service had to be discontinued. The few lantern slides that we have and also the photographs were donated by park friends. If this service had a well-equipped distribution service of visual educational material-film, slides, and photographs-it would make it complete and fulfill the purpose for which the parks were created, namely, to preserve and make available the wonder and beauty spots of the United States for the recreation and enjoyment of all the people. As it is, only a small percentage of the people actually see the parks and the establishment of such a service would bring, to the vast majority, the park scenes that they otherwise are not able to see. Because of lack of material it is with regret that we must discourage applications instead of stimulating inquiries and requests. I trust that the near future will find this service as well equipped as some of the other Government bureaus are to disseminate visual educational material. MOTION-PICture film. Two hundred and nine requests for the loan of film were received during the year, only 72 of which could be filled. One hundred and seventy-nine reels of film were used in filling these requests. The safety-first bureau of the Southern Railway used a Yosemite film, with their safety-first program, in 43 cities, with attendance of from 150 to 1,450 persons. Five reels were loaned to the American Legion for distribution over the United States. Requests for film from Australia, Canada, and France could not be filled. The 65 reels available for circulation last year, which are about two-thirds of the number that this service originally acquired, have become worn out and during the last three months all requests had to be refused. There are now only about a dozen reels in condition for further use and these have been reserved for the official lecture work of the officials of the service. Two thousand feet of film showing our national park scenery were assembled and titled in Portuguese for showing in Brazil by the American Commission at the Brazilian Centennial Exposition. During the year 56 permits for the taking of motion pictures in the parks were issued. LANTERN slides. One hundred and forty-five requests for the loan of slides were received during the year, but only 51 of them could be filled. Two thousand six hundred and twenty-nine slides were used in filling these requests. During the year a number of important lectures were given by officials of the service in their own time, although many requests for such lectures were necessarily refused. Forty-six lectures alone were given in the city of Washington by one official, testifying to the popularity of the parks as subjects for discussion and entertainment. PHOTOGRAPHS. Over 200 requests for the loan of photographs were received and 2,100 photographs were used in filling these requests. We were able to fill all requests received for photographs, the number in our files being about 3,000. These are used over and over. However, we are hampered in making suitable selections due to the fact that many of our best donated photographs are copyrighted and it is necessary to exercise great care in permitting their use. This is something that we would not have to be concerned with if we owned our own negatives. A set of enlargements of park scenes was collected from the park photographers and installed as an exhibit of the National Park Service at the travel exposition of the Travel Club of America, held in New York City last March. The purpose of the exposition was to create and stimulate interest in travel and it is to be regretted that the American exhibitors, with few exceptions, made a poor showing, while the several foreign concerns, backed by their Governments, spent thousands of dollars to put the scenic attractions of their respective countries before the public. It is interesting to know that photographs were loaned to a writer in France, to a lecturer in England for the purpose of making lantern slides for use in lecture work in Australia, for reproduction in a tourist book of the United States printed in Scandinavia and for a handbook on American customs to be distributed in South America. Enlargements of park photographs were exhibited at the State park conference held at Palisades Interstate Park, N. Y., and other enlargements were loaned to the "Ask Mr. Foster Travel Bureau for window display in Atlantic City and Washington, D. C. Five enlargements of park photographs neatly framed were loaned for hanging in the office of the Director of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Department of Commerce, and four framed photographs for hanging in the office of the Secretary of State. It is hoped that the Department of State will furnish national park photographs for wall decoration of American embassies and consulates abroad and that the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce will supply similar prints for the offices of their foreign trade representatives abroad. No more appropriate office decoration could be chosen than photographs of the supreme exhibits of our scenery; such showing would undoubtedly create greater interest for the United States in foreign countries. This service can arrange to have enlargements made and neatly framed in considerable numbers at low cost. Our only traveling exhibit of pictures was continued in circulation by the extension division of the University of Indiana. Numerous requests from commercial distributors of feature pictures were refused due to copyright agreements with the donors of the photographs. Many prints and enlargements were made for individuals who gladly paid the photographers' charges, and 60 electrotypes were made from plates used in Government publications at the expense of individuals, for reproduction in magazines and books. PUBLICATIONS. Each year the demand for the rules and regulations pamphlets for the various national parks increases and this season the following editions were printed: Yosemite, 50,000; Yellowstone, 50,000; Grand Canyon, 40,000; Mount Rainier, 25,000; Glacier, 30,000; Rocky Mountain, 25,000; Sequoia and General Grant, 25,000; Crater Lake, 20,000; Mesa Verde, 20,000; and Wind Cave, 15,000. Funds were donated for printing the Hot Springs rules and regulations pamphlet and an edition of 30,000 was printed. At this writing the editions for Hot Springs and Wind Cave National Parks are ex |