FORESTRY NOTES. 261 



the sands were swept inland. Farms were ruined, sometimes villages 

 were engulfed, often church spires sticking out of the drifts told where 

 towns were buried. Watching it all a man by the name of Bremontier 

 conceived the idea of fastening the sands by planting them to Maratime 

 Pine. He showed the plan to Napoleon. He saw the advantage and 

 ordered the work done. After years of patient labor the whole area was 

 changed to a thrifty forest. 



Remember, a sand bank is always an invitation to a conifer. Up in 

 Manitoba, 150 miles west of Winnipeg, while on the cars we went through 

 a region of shifting sands. Farmers foolishly brokei up the ground in the 

 hope of raising wheat. They got a crop or two, but the grass being de- 

 stroyed the sands began to drift. On the highest point of this sandy 

 stretch there was a clump of beautiful thrifty white spruce and I noticed 

 fine, healthy, vigorous little trees springing up all over the desolate area, 

 where the winter winds swept in their fury and the mercury sometimes 

 dropped to 50 below. 



Professor Green, of the Minnesota Agricultural College, one of the 

 best forest experts in the Northwest, visited the French forests and found 

 the foresters cutting out logs and they were actually shipping turpentine 

 and resin to America. Just think of it. The rich products of their sand 

 fields sent to us after we had wasted millions and millions of aci-es of 

 the finest pine forests in the world. The professor then went up to the 

 Dismal River Experiment Station to see how the men were making it 

 planting pine trees in our sandhills. He was pleased with the prospect 

 and said he could see no reason why they should not succeed there as 

 well as in France. Really there was a better show. There is considerable 

 grass on our sandy lands and so some humus in the soil. What impressed 

 him favorably was the pure air and fine water of that region. He thought 

 it was one of the healthiest places in America. 



It is well known that about twenty years ago Jack pines were planted 

 in Holt county and these have made the phenomenal growth of two feet 

 a year without cultivation or irrigation and little seedlings are coming 

 up all around them. It is not a question. It is a certainty. Lands now 

 worth $1 per acre can be made worth from $100 to $200 in twenty years. 

 Plant forty acres to pines and let them grow for ten years and see what 

 their prospective value would be. Our timber is being destroyed so 

 rapidly that in twenty or thirty years lumber must bring fabulous nrices. 



STOCK AND TIMBER. 



Of course trees would not take all the land, but in five or six years 

 what a shelter they would make for cattle. Alfalfa does fairly well up 

 there and as your trees get larger your ground will be better and grass, 

 when sheltered, will grow better than Avhen the ground is swept by the 

 winds. 



Nebraska is a parkless state, while she has the best advantage of any 



