ARBORICULTURE. 



139 



and timber owners of the near approach 

 to exhaustion of our timber supply and 

 the necessity of economy in its use. Sec- 

 ond, the planting" of immense forests to 

 provide a quick supply of timber. The 

 area destroyed each year is very far be- 

 yond what any man has yet told. The 

 government authorities seem to wish to 

 create the impression that we have a 

 never-ending supply. 



"In the eight years of Mr. Pinchot's 

 administration of the Forestry Bureau he 

 has only spent $2,741.25 in planting trees, 

 the total number of which is 1,275,000 

 trees in eight years, out of an appro- 

 priation of nearly a million dollars yearly 

 I have myself in this same time spent 

 $50,000, and planted, or caused to be 

 planted, 20,000,000 trees, through the so- 

 ciety which I represent. My book on 

 Practical Arboriculture will tell you why 

 I am 'possibly a Catalpa speciosa crank,' 

 as The Record states. If any man can 

 point to any tree which has so many val- 

 uable qualities as the catalpa, — one which 

 will grow in a brief period into lumber, 

 and a tree which Is so cosmopolitan in 

 character, growing everywhere, — -I shall 

 be glad to learn of it. 



"I am impressed more and more, in my 

 observations in the North Carolina moun- 

 tains, with the fact that little timber of 

 real value exists. Here are hundreds of 

 square miles of mountain land, all cov- 

 ered with what looks to be forest. The 

 general impression upon the average trav- 

 eler is that inexhaustible forests of heavy 

 timber cover these mountains. But let a 

 practical lumberman go into the woods 

 seeking trees for lumber, and the real 

 situation will be learned. Most of the 

 alleged forest consists of brush, which 

 will require a hundred years to mature; 

 all of present value has been culled and re- 

 moved. Hemlock, birch, sycamore, chest- 



nut, black locust and oak thickly cover 

 the land, but the very density of the stuff 

 prevents growth. Yet the forestry ex- 

 perts at Washington include all these 

 thousands of acres of scrub brush in their 

 valuable ( ?) estimates of forests of which 

 the United States is the proud possessor. 



"There are positively no estimates made 

 by any individual of the quantity of com- 

 mercial timber existing which have any 

 value whatever. I question if any man 

 living has had better opportunities for 

 observation than I, or has traveled over 

 more territory, or been more observant, 

 and I would not pretend to even guess at 

 the number of feet board measure exist- 

 ing. But I do know that it is only a frac- 

 tion of the quantity generally supposed. 

 And I also know that men sitting in their 

 offices in Washington talk and write very 

 unintelligently about the vastness of our 

 timber possessions. The rapidity with 

 which lumber has advanced in price, the 

 difficulty in obtaining supplies of good 

 lumber, the great number of very infe- 

 rior logs being sawed — all demonstrate 

 the nearness of the end. 



"We can not depend upon the natural 

 forest growth longer than to the end of 

 the first quarter of this century, and I can 

 see no other solution of the problem than 

 the planting of vast areas to trees. Mean- 

 time greater economy than has ever been 

 thought necessary among owners of tim- 

 ber lands will be necessary to make our 

 supply last even as long as I have pre- 

 dicted. 



"When timber land owners come to see 

 the lumber prospects as they really exist, 

 and learn that forest planting is so simple 

 and of so little cost, its returns coming in 

 so short a time, then I trust they will rise 

 to the emergency and their privilege and 

 plant new forests on their cut-over lands. 



"John P. Brown.'' 



