Forest Culture. 99 



pays ; and, secondly, the fact that is so uncommon for the son to 

 live on the acres his father tilled, makes it impossible to rely 

 largely on this phase of self-interest. Otherwise, it might easily 

 be shown that an estate in trees is a better bequest to one's heirs 

 than money in bank. 



There are, however, two or three considerations which modify 

 somewhat this rather disheartening view. First, it does not require 

 fifty years to make a paying forest crop. You do not have to wait 

 till the maturity of the trees before they begin to make returns. 

 Mr. John Ilall of Raynham, Mass., has a plantation thirty years 

 old, of white pine, already large enough to make board logs. 

 Col. Saltonstall, of the same state, transformed a bleak and worth- 

 less hill into a paying forest in seventeen years. There are many 

 such examples. A Larch plantation is calculated to yield three 

 times the total investment, including interest, at the first cutting, 

 in twenty years ; and at the rate of thirteen per cent, per annum 

 for the whole time, at the final catting, at the end of fifty years. 

 Further, the certain rise in the value of all timber products, which 

 must follow the further destruction of existing forests, must be 

 taken into account. Still more immediate in eflfect will be the 

 market value of growing plantations on farms, even though young, 

 as soon as the importance of this subject is generally understood. 

 If a young orchard is now an immense addition to the value of a 

 farm, so, in a few years, will be a grove of ash, of hickory, of 

 black walnut or elm. Thus may self-interest be enlisted. Gov- 

 ernmental aid may be made an important factor in the problem, 

 mostly in the direction and supervision. And, thirdly, public 

 spirit may be relied on to do a great deal when the nation is as 

 generally enlightened upon this subject as the people of Europe 

 now are. When the burning of a quarter section of solid oaks 

 shall be looked upon with horror, when the wanton destruction of 

 a growing tree shall be counted the sin it really is, when the 

 culture of valuable trees shall absorb some of the time and 

 money now wasted in trying to coax wheat out of the hard stones 

 of New England, or in scaring the grasshoppers away from the 

 windswept plains of Kansas and Dakota, when some of our col- 

 leges shall furnish young men with instruction in forestry, and 



