134 



ARBORICULTURE 



Forests Without Seeds — Bricks Without Straw. 



"Go therefore now, and work; for there 

 shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye 

 deliver the tale of bricks" (Exod. vi. i8). 



It has been but a third of a century 

 when the principal mountain slopes of 

 Colorado and other Rocky Mountain 

 States were clothed with coniferous for- 

 ests, but a very large proportion of these 

 mountain sides are now practically bare 

 of vegetation. 



During the same period Michigan, 

 Wisconsin and other Northern forest re- 

 gions have become equally bare of trees, 

 the pine forests having become exhausted. 

 The Gulf and South Atlantic region is 

 rapidly becoming treeless, as are the prai- 

 ries of Kansas and the West. 



Nature is continually making efforts to 

 cover up the bare spots of the earth, and 

 may in the course of centuries provide 

 some methods for planting trees and re- 

 storing some kinds of forests on all these 

 barren places ; but nature can not "make 

 bricks without straw." In other words, 

 trees can never be produced where no 

 seed exists, not even by nature. 



If the lumbermen, mine owners and 

 spoliators of Colorado forests have taken 

 away every seed tree, if the sawmill has 

 made lumber of the last white pine tree 

 of Michigan, and if the turpentine oper- 

 ator persists in making resin of baby pines 

 in the South, while fires annually burn the 

 young seedlings, from whence are forests 

 to be produced for this nation during the 

 coming generations? 



Bricks without straw — trees without 

 seeds. Some things are impossible, even 

 for nature. 



Then how can man aid nature in her 

 work of forest restoration? 



To re-clothe the Rockv Mountains bv 



the most approved methods of the for- 

 ester — that is, growing trees from seed 

 in nurseries and then transplanting them 

 to the slopes from which the trees have 

 been removed — is a work of such vast 

 magnitude that even the combined work 

 of government. State and nation could 

 never accomplish the gigantic task. 



And to re-forest the Michigan sands 

 with white pine by the same process is an 

 impossible accomplishment by any human 

 power, if this process is insisted upon. 

 Still, unless there be seed provided, cen- 

 turies must elapse ere other forests will 

 be produced. 



There is, however, a method by which 

 nature may be aided and encouraged to 

 perform the work which she is anxious to 

 do, and that is, to supply the seed. 



The national government expends half 

 a million dollars annually, and Congress 

 would cheerfully appropriate a million if 

 the question of forest perpetuation could 

 be accomplished, or if some means could 

 be shown which could promise to perform 

 this work, and could win the confidence 

 of the people and Congress. 



It is a self-evident assertion that with- 

 out seed no trees can be grown. 



And with an abundance of seed, unless 

 it be properly distributed where it is 

 needed, no forests will ever be produced. 



It is also well known that the country 

 possesses many millions of acres of land 

 which are unsuited for any other use than 

 for the production of forests. 



It is further known that an ample sup- 

 ply of seed exists and is produced each 

 year, in the locations where trees exist, to 

 furnish seed for all the land upon which 

 forests should be grown. 



But by whom, or by what agency, are 



