TUEB PLANTING IN NEBRASKA. 1->T 



have become desert wastes. The millions who there resided, and followed 

 their rude agriculture and the commerce and manufacture of the vast 

 cities have seen year by year the arable lands decrease until the waves 

 of sand lapped the postern gates, and dozens of cities prominent in his- 

 tory are in ruins, or lie buried in great depths by the desert. 



Inhabitants who lived there, prospered, suffered and died. Nomadic 

 tribes, carrying on more or less precarious and doubtful existence, oc- 

 cupy the montain fastness or travel along the narrowed river valleys. 



Over in western Europe, a few centuries ago, Spain was regarded as 

 the granary of the world. Choicest cereals and rich product of the vine, 

 came from Spain to sustain and stimulate the inhabitants of every port 

 where shipping was carried on. She destroyed her forests and with their 

 destruction came the washing away of the best of her soil and Spain 

 is dotted over with barren and denuded tracts, while, agriculturally, she 

 cannot feed her own people. 



Europe has awakened to the situation. France, up till about fifty 

 years ago, allowed her forests to be depleted and exploited, for private 

 use, but for more than forty years there has been no sale of forest lands, 

 and France is building up forestry in place of that destroyed. In the 

 last year $40,000,000 has been spent in France in foresting the sand dunes 

 and_ mountain sides. 



Since 1831, Germany has been planting forestry to take the place of 

 that destroyed by the deforesting of that country, prior to that time. 

 The result is that the government has great forestry of its own, which 

 is being cared for, and in nearly every rich estate and every small farm 

 holding, we find the government's work emulated by private effort, until 

 men tell you that, small as Germany is, its tree growth and products are 

 increasing and are becoming a source of vast wealth as well as the means 

 of national and community beauty. 



Even in India, where vast forestry always existed, but in the early 

 part of the last century was to a large extent wasted, we find that the 

 British government began in 1872 to replace the destroyed timber of the 

 vast empire. 



Among the states of the Union whose legislators have looked about 

 and noted the destruction of forestry and the ill effect it was having, not 

 only on building material, but in the injury to the landscape and wasting 

 of the soil, New York, in 1885, began extensive work and expenditure to 

 reforest the Empire state. 



In Nebraska, man found it without forestry. Vandalism never had an 

 opportunity to work its ruin along forest lines, but it was left to man to 

 build up and improve that condition which showed nature's manifest 

 neglect. In doing this, we know the federal government had encouraged 

 the planting of trees upon government lands but this was working from 

 above down to the bottom and the success following it was not measur- 

 ably great. 



The real and effective tree planting, and which should be -prosecuted. 



