ARBORICULTURE 



53 



make good farm land. The laws should 

 allow private lumbering, but it should 

 be under state supervision and direction 

 and on principles which would benefit 

 rather than depreciate the market value 

 of the land as timber land, and would 

 increase rather than decrease its water- 

 holding value. The laws should go 

 farther still, and provide that all steep 

 slopes too steep for plowing or even 

 good pasturage, should be reforested as 

 fast as practicable, by state aid, perhaps, 

 for many farmers could not find the 

 money necessary to set out all their steep 

 slopes. This aid could be given in such 

 way as to eventually return to the state 

 from the earnings of the land, which 

 would, througli this forestation, be in- 

 creased in value though at a rate too 

 slow for the average farmer to be able 

 to speculate upon or wait for. 



Just as some states authorize an abate- 

 ment of taxes for tree planting on high- 

 ways, so a similar policy would induce 

 land owners to replant their waste tracts 

 if state officers would show them how. 

 So long as forest lands are heavily bur- 

 dened with taxes and no law prevents or 

 other inducements are substituted, the 

 average forest owner will cut the timber 

 in the easiest and quickest way possible, 

 and thus destroy the land and all future 

 profits, for but few look far enough ahead 

 to see the short sightedness of such a 

 policy. 



The state should buy the valueless 

 land, not the timber land, if it need buy 

 at all, and reforest it, but its laws should 

 be such as to prevent a denudation of 

 land now forested. 



In France a new province has been 

 practically added to the country by plant- 

 ing forests. During Roman times the 

 region known as the Landes, on the 

 shore of the Bay of Biscay, was heavily 

 wooded, but after being stripped of its 

 forest covering, the soil, a very light 

 sand, began to drift inland, burying vil- 

 lages and rendering the whole country 

 uninhabitable, so that the government 

 had to take up the work of tree plant- 

 ing in self-defense. The region is now 

 a famous health resort as well as a well- 

 managed pine forest, paying a liberal 

 interest on the investment made in plant- 

 ing it, and now furnishes lumber for the 



industry of the land, to say nothing 

 about the improvement of climatic con- 

 ditions. Why, then, cannot our states, 

 with seldom so difficult a problem, re- 

 claim their great tracts of waste land and 

 be immeasurably richer by so doing? 



California has a few exceptions to the 

 ai)ove principles, for her Sequoias are 

 so unique that these mammoth monu- 

 ments to the wonderful climate and soil 

 of that exceptional state should be pre- 

 served at any cost. But, for the vast 

 forests of redwoods, of pine, and of other 

 species on the Pacific coast, the rules 

 just spoken of hold true and oitr states 

 and our government sJiould step in non', 

 and regulate the present lumbering 

 met hods zvhich are making deserts of our 

 mountains which ought to continue 

 forever to furnish our land zvith zvood 

 supplies, and to send to our valleys the 

 steady fiozv of rivers and creeks without 

 which they soon become unfertile and ■un- 

 productive. 



.Arboriculture has fortunately got 

 enough foothold already in this countrv 

 so that facts are obtainable to answer the 

 question about which so many are 

 ignorant, namely : "Will it pay to plant 

 and cultivate forest trees ?" In the plan- 

 tation of L. W. Yaggy, near Hutchinson, 

 Kansas, the young trees show a net aver- 

 age annual return of $19.75 per acre 

 for the first ten years of their growth, 

 and further figures go to show that if 

 one could wait for the returns, the aver- 

 age land set out to trees would bring 

 better income per year than if planted 

 with corn or other farm produce. 



And now all we need is concerted 

 action by all the states concerning the 

 management of regions of sand, which, if 

 already covered with trees, should be so 

 supervised by proper officials that at least 

 60 per cent should remain in forest, if 

 not so covered, should be immediately set 

 out to wood lots in that proportion, 

 selecting, of course, the hilly and least 

 easily worked land for the trees. 



In Oneida county, N. Y., during one 

 of my many long drives, my horses had 

 been laboring along through a most deso- 

 late country, absolutely without trees and 

 practically nothing but dried up sandy 

 pasture land. The road was of so loose a 

 sand as to make trotting almost an im- 



