17C Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



money value for our own time, it would pay largely on the 

 investment. 



Mr. O. B. Galusha, in a lecture at the Industrial Univer- 

 sity of Illinois, in the year 18G9, has this to say: A few miles 

 from ray residence are a few acres of ground which were 

 cleared of timber sixteen years since. There was then left 

 on the ground a growth of underbrush only, consisting of 

 several varieties of oak, hickory, ash, and some other sorts. 

 I have watched the growth of timber there from year to 

 year until the present time, and am myself surprised at the 

 result. 



The land was worth when cleared, perhaps, twelve dollars 

 per acre, not more. There have been taken from it during 

 the last seven years poles equal in value probably to $10 per 

 acre, and $150 per acre would hardly buy the trees now 

 standing upon it. 



He further remarks that this same land would sell for $50 

 per acre if all the timber was removed. 



When I first came to this country, thirty -five years ago, I 

 knew a wood lot of about twenty-five acres, principally 

 burr oak. This soon came up with a thick growth of black, 

 white, red and yellow oak, and to-day those trees will meas- 

 ure from eight to fourteen inches in diameter, of tall, straight 

 specimens of timber. 



A row of hard maples set out a few years later has yielded 

 a bountiful supply of sap for sugar, or sy^rup for a number 

 of years. An elm tree set out near my well on the old place 

 will measure now twenty inches, or two feet in diameter, 

 and would no doubt produce one cord of wood. Upon this 

 basis it will be easy to see that a plot of ground of ten or 

 twenty acres on a farm of eighty or one hundred and sixty 

 acres, would be no mean investment even on our rich prairie 

 soil. 



So far in this paper my plea has been mainly: plant trees 

 for their value in dollars and cents, but there is another side 

 to this question which I would not dare to overlook, and that 

 is the influence of our forests in protecting large areas of 

 country from sweeping winds and also by retaining moist- 

 ure in decaying leaves and in the humus of the soil. 



