54 FOREST commissioner's REPORT. 



and to restore it to something like its original value and produc- 

 tiveness. 



The method seems obvious enough. If we would have trees, 

 whether apple trees, oak trees or pine trees, when we cut one down 

 we must plant another. H;!ppily, nature comes to correct the 

 results of our own untbritt. When a pine or other indigenous tree 

 is cut down, she does not ask us to plant another. She will do that 

 by the energy of her own productiveness. But she does ask us not 

 to murder or mutilate it, and to allow it to perfect itself in size and 

 value before we set our destructive hands to it. 



But nature may be helped by the wise hand of man. Nature will 

 plant trees wherever we destroy what have been produced, but she 

 may plant firs where pines would grow as well, and alders, where 

 oaks or birches would be more valuable. By planting the more 

 vaUiable woods, by discouraging the inferior growths, man can make 

 nature work most effectually to his advantage. 



The first and principal difficulty in the way of any large and 

 general replanting of trees, is private ownership. In favorable 

 situations certain trees may come to maturity in fifty or sixty years ; 

 but for the most valuable growths, and for the poorer lands, which 

 alone can be dedicated to timber, we must expect to wait a century 

 before the artificial plantation shall become the source of a steady 

 annual income. 



In this country men do not generally achieve large properties in 

 lands or other values until they have reached the confines of old age. 

 To expect of men whose prudent judgment has led them to fortune, 

 to make investments in enterprises, from which no substantial return 

 is to be expected until after the lapse of a centuiy, is making too 

 large a demand upon the disinterestedness of human nature. Nearly 

 the whole area of forest land in this State is owned by individual 

 citizens, and that is a condition of things likely to be permanent. 

 All that the legislature can wisely do is to pass such laws, as will 

 be most likely to encourage private proprietors in so managing their 

 forest lands, that they shall be kept in the highest condition of pro- 

 ductiveness, and be for them and their heirs a source of perpetual 

 income. Two causes are constantly urging timber land owneis to 

 strip and denude of trees their holdings. One is the liability of 

 their being devastated by forest fires, and the other is the prebsure 

 of an onerous taxation. 



