PRIVATE REFORESTATION 



823 





Nursery on the Vilas Tract. 



here the brooklyn cooperage company gets a large portion of its supply of seedlings for replanting 

 its lands. it also purchases some from the state nurseries. 



Although, of course on a much smaller 

 scale, the Brooklyn Cooperage Company 

 Nursery at Balsam Camp, near the 

 Five Mile Dam, West Branch, St. Regis 

 River, St. Lawrence Coimty, compares 

 very favorably with the best nursery 

 owned and operated by New York 

 State. John A. Fraser, the Company's 

 woods superintendent of St. Regis 

 Falls, took charge of the work of 

 establishing the seed beds and nursery 

 in 1911. Mr. Fraser is a practical 

 lumberman and woodsman, and he 

 has satisfactorily demonstrated that he 

 is also a practical forester and forest 

 tree nurseryman. Under his direction, 

 Wilber Wilson, caretaker of Balsam 

 Camp for the Brooklyn Cooperage 

 Company, has looked after the seed 

 beds and nurseries, and they have 

 prospered under his hand. The ac- 

 companying i)hotographs show por- 

 tions of the Balsam Camp nurseries, 

 and some of the reforested lands of the 

 company in the vicinity of the camp. 



In 1911, the company set out 56 seed 

 boxes of the usual size, sowing 10 

 pounds of seeds, which produced 142,- 

 000 seedlings. Two years later, 82,000 

 of these seedlings were taken out of the 



seed boxes and transferred to the 

 nursery, while 59,700 were committed 

 to the care of the parent forest. In 

 1914, three-year old seedlings to the 

 niimber of 60,500 were also planted in 

 the forest, leaving 21,000 four- year olds 

 for planting next spring. This year 

 they planted 20 pounds of new seed and 

 10 pounds of old seed, and estimate 

 from them about 100,000 seedlings. 

 The seedlings of 1913 will be set in the 

 nursery in 1915, and those of 1914, in 

 1916. Possibly some of the two-year 

 old seedlings may be taken direct to 

 the forest in 1916. 



In addition to their own nursery pro- 

 duction, the Brooklyn Cooperage Com- 

 pany has ordered from the Conservation 

 Commission 50,000 three-year old Nor- 

 way Spruce transplants to be planted 

 with four-year old seedlings of 1911 and 

 two-year old seedlings of 1913 next 

 spring. 



It is interesting to know that Super- 

 intendent Fraser finds that trees planted 

 from the beds in the open seem to fare 

 much better than those put in the 

 plantation, as it appears that in the 

 plantation of 59,700 trees in 1913 there 

 is a loss of about 2% and of the 82,000 



