Work of the Forest Service in Nebraska. 57 



■would require, and we would have to grow our own stock. It would 

 require three years time to prepare nurseries and grow seedlings. 

 The Forestry officials and the public were anxious to see a beginning 

 made, so we resorted to extreme measures. We shipped in wild seed- 

 lings from the forests of the Black Hills of South Dakota and the sand 

 barrens of Minnesota. The result was, we profited by success and fail- 

 ure. The results have been freely given to the public at all times, 

 and I am glad today to tell you more about the results of our work. 



In the beginning let me say that we cannot contribute any of our 

 failures to weather conditions, for the summers of 1903, 1904 and 

 1905 have been very favorable. The winter of 1903-1904 was very 

 dry and probably injured us some but not severely. 



One of the first things that we learned was that we could not ship 

 in Western Yellow Pine seedlings from the forest and grow them suc- 

 cessfully. The reason is obvious to those who are acquainted with the 

 habit of growth and nature of the tree. It is impossible to dig the 

 murdering their roots, and the roots are the vital parts of a pi:ie 

 tree. 



Another thing that we learned by experience in the spring of 

 1903 was that we could successfully grow Jack pine seedlings from 

 the sandy barrens of Minnesota. Of the 70,000 trees of this species 

 planted that season between 30 and 40 per cent grew. That is not 

 a large percentage but it was enough to encourage us. We saw where 

 we could improve the methods of handling the trees and we determined 

 to double the per cent of living trees in another year. In our next 

 attempt with the same kind of stock we succeeded in getting &7 Vz 

 per cent to grow. We made no changes in our methods of planting, 

 but we sent two men to the woods to see that the trees were dug from 

 the ground, not pulled, and to see that the men digging the trees car- 

 ried pails partly filled with water and that the roots were put into 

 into the buckets as soon as the .trees were dug, instead of being carried 

 around under the arm until a good big bunch had been secured. Our 

 men also saw that they were properly packed. The moral of this is 

 protect the roots of a pine tree if you expect it to live after trans- 

 planting. 



The success of the Jack Pine as a tree for the sand hills has not 

 stopped with our own planting. We recommend it for general planting 

 throughout the sand hill region of this state and to my knowledga 

 over 60,000 Jack Pines were shipped into this state last spring by 

 one dealer. A number of these came to Thedford. Two weeks ago I 

 wrote to each of the men who bought trees and asked for the results 

 of their planting. A summary of the replies gives the following 



