142 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



from the eighteen, making it twenty-five years old, could it not be used 

 for lumber to any advantage to the grower? 



Professor Miller: There is quite a matter regarding the lumber 

 proposition to come out in our papers. We measured all the plantations 

 for lumber as far as we could get at it, and we fixed the stumpage 

 value of Cottonwood at ten dollars a thousand. I am told that in many 

 places it sells for eighteen and twenty dollars and sometimes as high 

 as twenty-two. Figuring the average cost of the raw material and the 

 freight on the finished product, we arrived at this conclusion, and our 

 figures will bear it out: That unless you can get ten dollars a thousand 

 at least for your lumber, you had better sell it, or just as well sell it, 

 for cordwood at two dollars a cord. In other words, we did this: Say 

 you take a twenty-five or thirty-year plantation, it will total a certain 

 number thousand board feet — I do not remember exactly now, but we 

 will suppose it is thirty thousand. We figure that at ten dollars a 

 thousand; then we also determine the number of cords of wood in that 

 thirty thousand board feet, and we figure that at two dollars a cord, 

 and they total pretty nearly the same thing. There is only a few 

 dollars difference. These figures include all the plantations, some being 

 thirty-five and even up to forty-six years old. 



A Member: You stated that you think it would have been better to 

 have planted some of the plantations thicker, twice the number of 

 trees? 



Professor Miller: Yes, I think it would have been. 



Question; That would have doubled the income, would it not? 



Professor Miller: I do not know it would have doubled it, but it 

 would have increased it very materially. It would be better to start 

 them close together and then thin them out when they commenced to 

 crowd and fight one another; then you would get some good out of the 

 material. 



A Member: In a catalpa grove you referred to, I wanted to ask if 

 anything was taken out for the first thirteen or fourteen years? 



Professor Miller: No, but it would have been better if he had taken 

 some out. 



Question- Then that plantation is good for future years? 



Professor Miller: Yes, he has harvested it and it is growing right 

 up again. He writes me that it has made a splendid growth the last 

 summer, and he will go in this year and cut out the sprouts from the 

 stumps, all but one or two, leaving one or two sprouts to each stump. 

 It will grow much faster from the stump than it did from the seed and 

 in ten years he can cut as much as he did in seventeen from the seed. 



Question: And he will get a better product in ten years from the 

 stump than he did fcom the seed, will he not? 



Professor Miller: Yes. I think that is true, because he will get a 

 larger percentage of good posts. 



Question: Don't catalpa posts mature in ten years? 



