ARBORICULTURE 



351 



Replace the Forests. 



In a state where hundreds of acres of 

 good timber are destroyed every year by 

 the sheer carlessness of campers and where 

 other hundreds go down into the maws of 

 the sawmills, the restoration of the forests 

 may not be a timely subject, in that it is as 

 much of an error to have your skirmish line 

 too far in advance of the main body as it is 

 to hold it too near. 



There is something attractive and signifi- 

 cant about a healthy tree. It means love 

 of home and regard also for the comfort of 

 your neighbors. In a yard where the trees 

 are "rusty" for want of water and where 

 theramnants of the grass are interspersed 

 with weeds you may look in the background 

 for the sign of a frayed out professional. 

 Even the dog slinks and there is no laugh 

 of children in the surrounding air. Then 



look at the baked farmhouse — treeless and 

 vineless. No wonder the children desert it 

 for the town and city. Indeed, hardly any- 

 thing is quite as forbidding as a farmhouse 

 without trees, and healthy trees at that. 



Over in Wisconsin, where millionaries 

 have been created by marketing the for- 

 ests, one of the state senators, Hon. N. P. 

 Bird of Peshtigo, himself a practical lum- 

 berman, is about to inaugerate an extensive 

 experiment in pine growing, and this, too, 

 in spite of the declaration of other practi- 

 cal lumbermen that the replacing of the 

 pine forest cannot be MADE TO PAY, 

 holding that since it takes a century to 

 grow a pine fit to cut the culture of such 

 pine is not profitable and therefore not 

 feasible. 



At no distant date, observes the Milwau- 

 kee Sentinel, forest growing will be a 

 subject in which the people of the country 

 will have a deeper interest than they have 

 at present, and upon which their knowledge 

 will be greatly increased- As yet the in- 

 evitable results of the fearful waste of 

 timber that has been going on since the 

 forests were attacked for the wealth they 

 contained have not been seriously felt, but 



before the present century ends the woes 

 of a timberless country will be upon the 

 people. The benefits that have accrued 

 from the clearing of the land are so evident 

 in the present that it is difficult to realize 

 that they will be followed by disaster, but, 

 to quote a writer in the Independent, "it is 

 not using too strong language to say that 

 the day will come in America when our 

 descendants will find no language bitter 

 enough to word the cursings of their hearts 

 upon the lumbermen of to-day." 



To the lumberman add the careless cam- 

 per, as this is the season of the year when 

 he is too much in evidence in Utah, Wyom- 

 ing, Colorado and Montana. The federal 

 timber agents are not sufficiently numerous 

 to keep him in check. What he needs is 

 the adverse public opinion which, in the 

 early days, made horse stealing dangerous 

 and unprofitable. 



In many of the European countries, 

 where forest culture is regarded as an ex- 

 act science, the people have learned in that 

 dearest of all schools — the school of exper- 

 ience. They have finally reached the point 

 where it is not a question of what will pay 

 from the lumberman's viewpoint, but what 

 will save the country from the evils of 

 denudation. And there is some comfort in 

 the knowledge that with great care and 

 expense they are preserving their forests — 

 even adding to them. Whenever the be- 

 gining may be made to repair as far as 

 possible the damage that has been done, it 

 must be undertaken with the knowledge 

 that the generation making it cannot profit 

 by it. The benefit will be for those who 

 come long after. It is perhaps, too much 

 to hope that the beginning will be made 

 before necessity compels it. 



The person who plants a tree and cares 

 for it should be regarded with favor by 

 all right-thinking men and won en. 



