INDIANA HOETICULTURAL SOCIETY. 269 



believe if nature is given an opportunity she will clothe the earth with 

 forests; she will do wonders if only half an opportunity is given. The 

 reason I believe this is, because in the State of Michigan we have im- 

 mense areas of cut-over lands that are worthless. They are not worth 

 anything as an investment, now. If you inventory them at one cent an 

 acre, you overdo it; but thej- will grow timber if given a chance. If the 

 State of Michigan will simply prevent tires and will keep out the thieves, 

 God will cover that country with a beautiful growth of timber in time. 

 Poor lands take longer; good lands give quicker returns: but I believe 

 that those poor jack pine plains that are today an abomination of deso- 

 lation, because the fires have swept over them time and again, can be 

 made, in fifty years, to have a real value to the State, and the State need 

 do nothing except to keep the fires out, and when the trees get big enough 

 to be stolen, to keep the thieves out. That is what we are agitating in 

 the State of Michigan. 



In traversing that country, that poor counti-y. where the fires have 

 been kept out and there is an occasional tree that has been left, we find 

 not poor jack pine simply, but we find white pine, Norway pine, oak, and 

 other valuable timbers coming up on those poor barrens; and this relates 

 to that poor, worthless land of the State of Michigan. I am satisfied, 

 I feel safe in saying, that the next crop, on all that cut-over land, will 

 bring to the State of Michigan in fifty years more than the crop that 

 was first taken off, if it is perfectly safe in its protection, the increased 

 value of timber being taken into consideration. 



There are some very strange circumstances in connection with the 

 fact that this new crop of timber comes up where the old had been cut 

 off, up in the northern country; for instance, just as likely as not it will 

 grow up thickly with oaks, where pines were before gi'owing. How can 

 that be explained? Is it that the crows have picked these acorns and 

 transported them to those parts? Hardly. You can get a crow to take 

 one once in a while a mile, but they don't come down here and pick and 

 carry away enough to seed the hundreds and thousands of acres that 

 are coming up with little oak trees, with no seed growing in the vicinity. 

 That seems to me like a miracle; nevertheless it is true. I have this way 

 of explaining the matter. Those oaks are there. They came up together, 

 but the pines got the start and the oaks got left; but they remained there, 

 and just as soon as the pines were taken away, were cut off, they simply 

 came to the front. We know of little oaks in pine woods, we could ac- 

 tually count with the microscope hundreds of them that have just stayed 

 there. The government don't know that they are there. Only competency 

 will find them. I have on my farm a little forest of six acres. I planted 

 one single row of black ash seedlings right next to a row of Austrian pines. 

 They are now about fifteen inches tall. The ash are about twelve inches. 

 The ash will soon be crowded out; the pine will continue to grow. I could 

 not understand the oak business until I had actually seen the black ash 



