No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 469 



year, and they should be cared for. The State forest nurseries 

 should furnish gratuitously to the agricultural community a limited 

 number of forest trees whenever proper guarantee is given that 

 they will be cared for, as no nursery could be expected to ex- 

 pend its labor, send out its trees, and have them neglected. The 

 agricultural interests of the communitj', which have so often de- 

 manded that the State furnish them forest trees gratuitously, 

 should bear in lively remembrance that they would have a duty to 

 perform after receiving those trees. 



Forest fires which have hitherto proved eo destructive, have never 

 been under so good control in this State as during the past season. 

 We, no doubt, shall have in this Commonwealth, our patience still 

 severely tried by their annual occurrence, but after all the fault 

 lies mostly with the citizens themselves. No law can be made self- 

 operative; the best that any law can do is to give protection when 

 it is applied by those interested. The Legislature has placed at the 

 command of the citizens of every county in this Commonwealth, 

 abundant means to protect their forest holdings, if they will enforce 

 them. The law which makes it the duty of constables to summon a 

 posse and fight forest fires has been pronounced constitutional by 

 careful and judicious judges in this Commonwealth, and it is the 

 duty of the county commissioners to pay those who give their labor 

 to protect our lands. The statement that the price paid for fighting 

 forest fires is an inducement to create them is too puerile to merit 

 attention. There is no harder way that I know of for a man to at- 

 tempt to earn 12 cents an hour than by fighting a forest fire, and it is 

 noteworthy that those who have made the statement, that this 

 law was an inducement for the creation of forest fires, ha .e never 

 been able to furnish a single instance to justify their assertion. In 

 my judgment, what is needed more than anything else is simply a 

 rigid application of the remedy which is in the hands of every citizen. 

 It is encouraging to note, however, that public sentiment never was 

 so crystallized in this State against those who start forest fires as 

 at present, and this may be regarded as a reasonable guarantee that 

 fires in the future, probably, will be fewer in number and less severe 

 than those of the past have been under other conditions. 



It is worthy to note here, that forestry does not necessarily pre- 

 clude the use of growing timber, in fact, it is for the growth of tim- 

 ber that forestry exists and for the legitimate use of it, when 

 mature, or when it can be marketel to best advantage without injury 

 to the remainder of the crop. It should also be stated that in 

 almost every young forest having a stand of average thickness, 

 there are many trees which have been x)roperly designated as "sup- 

 pressed trees." That is, owing to a disadvantage of position, or 

 to inherent weakness or to lack of adaptation to the situation, others 

 of different kinds, or even of the same kind may have towered above 

 them. In general, it may be said that these trees are the least 

 promising of the forest, at least, w^hen the forest is mainly of one 

 kind of tree. Under such conditions, it is usually of advantage to 

 the remaining growth to remove those suppressed trees when they 

 stand in the way of the growth of the other trees. Hence then, at 

 every stage in the growth of a forest there are certain trees which 

 can be removed, as a rule, with advantage to the remaining trees. 



