46 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ceed. Though not exactly appropriate to this connection, I can not refrain 

 from relating an anecdote of Alice and Phoebe Gary, who, returning 

 from school one day, passed where a farmer had thinned a hedge-row and 

 thrown the rejected bushes into the highway. The sisters were moved to 

 pity by the ruthless destruction, especially as to one bush more comely than 

 the rest, and they said, " Let us take this one and plant it over on the 

 other side, for the man who has not enough trees." This simple, beautitul 

 act they did, and watched the little bush till it grew to a handsome tree; 

 and in after years, whenever they returned to their early home, nothing 

 seemed more dear to them than the tree they rescued from the hedge-row 

 and nourished into new life. The Secretary will read Mr. Baebek's 

 paper upon 



''reasons for continual agitation of forestry questions in our state." 



You ask me to devote an hour's time to the presentation of some reasons 

 for continued agitation of forestry questions in Michigan. 



There is nothing new to be said on the subject, and yet it is important 

 that the attention of the public be invited to its consideration, in the hope 

 that a fuller discussion and better understanding of the value of our for- 

 ests will lead to the adoption of more measures for their cultivation and 

 preservation. 



Eight years ago President Arthur called the attention of congress and 

 the people to this question in a few well-chosen words. "The condition 

 of the forests of the country," he said, " and the wasteful manner in which 

 their destruction is taking place, give cause for serious apprehension. 

 Their action in protecting the earth's surface, in modifying the extremes 

 of climate, and in regulating and sustaining the flow of springs and 

 streams, is now well understood, and their importance in relation to the 

 growth and jDrosperity of the country can not be safely disregarded. They 

 are fast disappearing before destructive fires and the legitimate require- 

 ments of our increasing population, and their total extinction can not be 

 long delayed unless better methods than now prevail shall be adopted for 

 their xjrotection and cultivation." 



There are difficulties in the way of forest cultivation in this country, 

 under the system of private ownership of the soil and the recognized right 

 of the individual to do as he pleases with his own, that do not exist in 

 some other nations. It is impossible to compel men to j)lant forests on 

 their own land. The owner of a small farm will clear every acre and depend 

 upon his neighbor, who has a larger number of acres, for forest protection, 

 wood, and timber. It is poor economy for even the forty-acre farmer, as 

 with twenty-five acres of properly cultivated crops and fifteen acres of 

 woodland, his little homestead will be worth more, and will be more prof- 

 itable, than a treeless forty. Government can not compel the planting of 

 forests or fruit trees. It can not force people to do better. The more 

 government we have the greater are the probable — aye, the inevitable — 

 evils. There is no use of looking to it as an agency for forest protection 

 and restoration. The Anglo-Saxon American will not surrender the 

 liberty of using his own private judgment in the battle of life to the dicta- 

 tion of a majority. The cost would be too great. " Better perhaps," says 

 an anonymous writer, "that the soil should continue to run to the sea than 

 that the example of paternalism should breach the bulwarks of individual 

 liberty." 



