STATE FORESTRY CONVENTION. 211 



sents a money value of $4.00 for sugar purposes. This is reckoned on the 

 basis of syrup at one dollar per gallon. 



Mr. Davenport, t>y statistics, showed that the market for the product v^ould 

 always be good, and illustrated by facts within his own observation that 

 sugar orchards could be as permanently valuable investments as any other 

 property in which the farmer could invest. There must be the same regard 

 for succession that the successful orchardist manifests when he has a young 

 orchard in its prime at the time the old one enters a decline. A maple tree 

 that has reached its maturity should be used for lumber and fuel, and the 

 sapling that sprang up not far away should have been nurtured to take its 

 place. By proper management a grove of maples may be continually renewed 

 and the young trees will be more valuable than the older ones, because grown 

 under conditions that are to be constant; while the cutting away of large 

 areas of timber has left the older trees open to changes to which they have 

 never been accustomed. 



With reference to the discouragement in planting, produced by the length 

 of time before returns may be expected, Mr. Davenport remarked: 



" True it does take time, but do as our old friend Josh Billings used to say, 

 and *set them out a good while ago.' It takes time to raise an orchard of 

 fruit trees. Nature has favored us ; let us provide for posterity. Neither 

 does it take so long a time as we might suppose. Groves of maple that 

 within my recollection were small trees are now tapped. I knew one tree by 

 the roadside that forty years ago was a little switch preserved by one of the 

 early settlers. It is now eighteen inches in diameter, and has a beautiful top 

 forty feet across. Trees along our place, set twenty years ago, are nearly 

 large enough for tapping, and they have been all the time in a June grass 

 sod. Thirty-eight years ago, in a township adjoining my own, ten acres of 

 oak were girdled and left to fall down and rot upon the ground. From that 

 day to this nature has had her way in that old slashing. She set about 

 covering the disgrace. The winds scattered those little winged seeds among 

 the rotten logs, and to-day the ground is covered with a dense grove of 

 maples with scarcely a tree of any other species. It is said that over three 

 thousand thrifty maples now stand on that ten acres, many of them large 

 enough for tapping. I would rather have that ten acres of maple grove than 

 any twenty acres of farm land in Barry county. These instances show what 

 maple trees will do without care, and under circumstances when even apple 

 trees would make but a sickly growth or none at all." 



Mr. A. C. Glidden, of Paw Paw, gave a short paper on 



MANAGEMENT OF THE KESERVE WOOD LOT. 



After stating the proposition that all the management necessary was to take 

 out the mature timber and give the growing trees the best opportunity to 

 develop, he discussed the question of economy in having any reserve wood 

 lot at all. 



He questioned if the farmer should be influenced by any theories of scien- 

 tific gentlemen with reference to the climatic influence of reserved timber 

 areas, when he has the fact staring him in the face that this land has a 

 definite value to him for the production of crops above its worth in furnish- 

 ing him wood and timber. He argued that the farm wood lot and the 

 reserve timber lot will stand or fall from considerations of evidence more 



