Timber Growing. 165 



is now cutting he will find it has taken one and even two hundred 

 years to make them what they are. Then if he will go into any 

 of the thick groves of young timber that have sprung up wild, 

 and have grown to be twenty feet or more in height, he will find 

 that the thickness of the setting has so crowded up the growth 

 of tho3e trees as to give them the straight, trim and handsome 

 little bodies that will make, in a hundred years or so, large, straight 

 trunks like those of the trees he is now cutting down. What is 

 needed is simply to follow nature, and where we want a growth 

 of forty feet or more, set the trees close together, say four feet 

 apart, so that the growth developed by nature and cultivation 

 will crowd the trees up in straight rows and bodies, and not allow 

 them to branch out in every direction. This was the mistake that 

 was made in tree planting in many parts of the country at first. 

 They thought better to give plenty of room and to give the de- 

 sired shape by pruning, but they soon found that the pruning 

 was expensive and that they could not secure a straight, upward 

 growth in this way, and were driven to close setting to accomplish 

 this. 



J. W. Wood — I agree with President Fratt, that we should 

 not be held responsible for the ideas we advance here, but I think 

 that if any remarks I may have made called out this animated 

 discussion from friend Stickney they must have been well said. 

 The timber in which I am located is not the Burr Oak, or the 

 White or Black Oak of the clay ridges, but the heavy timber of 

 the Baraboo Valley, tall, straight, thrifty Maples, Elms and Oaks. 

 In clearing off my building site, I left quite a number of these 

 Maples, as ornaments for the dooryard and around the house. 

 They were nice, thrifty trees, in good condition. They were 

 beautiful trees and I was very glad to have them there, but they 

 soon commenced to die in the top, the limbs died away and the 

 bodies commenced to decay, and I have been compelled every 

 year to cut down some of them because they were unsafe in the 

 yard. This native timber will not bear civilization. If you 

 leave patches in the field for groves or for timber purposes, when 

 the supports around are cut away the trees will commence to 

 blow down, rot and die out. The timber has got its age, it is 



