158 Wiscoxsm State Horticultural Society. 



their toes and cracking their jokes around stoves invented and 

 manufactured by the " universal Yankee " expressly to burn 

 little hard pressed cubes of hay or straw. Move on to Manitoba 

 and in latitude fifty degrees north you will see the Russian emi- 

 grants in colonies, going boldly out onto the vast plains, asking for 

 very little fuel besides the hay and straw they can grow, and 

 burning the same in rude structures, half stove, half oven, made 

 of sun dried bricks. With these simple fixtures all their food 

 is cooked and all needed warmth obtained. If further illustra- 

 tion is needed, it is furnished by the Icelander with his house of 

 snow and lamp of seal oil. 



From our standpoint this other extreme is not particularly in- 

 viting, therefore, while there is no immediate cause for alarm, it 

 is very proper that we should at once consider ways and means of 

 keeping a reasonable supply of fuel and building material within 

 our reach. To dwellers in and immediately around the large 

 commercial centers, those things wiU always be accessible, per- 

 haps at rather large prices, yet land in such localities will also 

 command a large price or a large rental, so that it would hardly 

 pay to grow timber. Take for instance, the land I am now clear- 

 ing six miles from Milwaukee ; it has been held by one owner for 

 thirty-five years idle, except for the growth of its wood. There 

 has been no time in the last twenty years when the wood on an 

 average acre would not have sold for seventy-five dollars, and the 

 same acre put under good tillage would have given a net income 

 of five dollars per year. The seventy-five dollars put at six per 

 cent interest would have given four and a half dollars, thus mak- 

 ing the annual net income nine and a half dollars per acre ; this 

 multiplied by 110, shows conclusively that to that owner it was 

 not a paying investment. 



The annual growth of at least twenty acres is needed to supply 

 an average family with fuel ; twenty acres of such land gives us 

 one hundred and ninety dollars annually with which to buy fuel. 

 The conclusion is, that it will not pay to use such land for timber 

 growing. Of course there are other considerations besides dollars 

 and cents that would lead us to plant and cultivate more or less 

 timber in all localities. 



