790 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



REFORESTATION 



Regeneration is mostly obtained by planting or sowing in spots. 

 To be sure, planting is a very positive way of getting a young growth 

 started, but it is expensive. A fact not always heard of in America 

 when referring to or praising the industrious planting in Europe is 

 that labor has been two or three times cheaper than in America. Now 

 that the price of labor is going up there also, one begins to look around 

 for satisfactory regeneration, without such large expenditure. Luckily, 

 many efforts have been quite successful. Artificial regeneration is 

 still the sure cure but not always the cheapest method of getting a new 

 growth, even considering that time in money and in natural reforesta- 

 tion, land might sometimes wait for its new growth. Sowing in spots 

 made with a mattock or planting with 1.5 meters between the plants or 

 spots (1,800 per acre)^ are the most usual methods. The ground is 

 left untouched for a year or two after the cut to allow the debris to 

 rot down somewhat, and the numerous bugs to disappear or else light 

 burning takes place after the cutting and the ground is planted or 

 sowed. Sowing has been widely adopted heretofore on account of 

 its apparent cheapness. But in many places one recognizes now that 

 the crowding in spots which takes place in earlier years can be quite 

 detrimental to the growth and often, in the case of the pine, branchy 

 .dominant trees get the upper hand in the struggle for existence. One 

 has had bitter experience in the sowing of the seed coming from 

 tracts unlike in climate to that where the sowing was done. It was 

 about the period of 1870 to 1880 when artificial reforestation had 

 become popular that one looked around for cheap seed and found it 

 in Germany. The knotty, unsightly young stands resulting from these 

 early forest cultures were at first mistaken as showing that artificial 

 reforestation was impossible and "unnatural." Now that the trouble 

 has been discovered, planting is done with Swedish seed. (German 

 spruce is however allowed in the south.) The removal of these forests 

 long before they have reached maturity, is a serious proposition in 

 some parts. It is principally for this reason that the Government has 

 established seed collecting stations in each province. The type of 

 tree already existing is the one best suited to the climatic conditions. 

 Local variations in type is very evident in the case of the pine. The 



3 Some planting in America has been affected at moderate costs by planting 

 only half the amount of plants mentioned. In spite of the fact that this given 

 number of plants per acre has been determined by experience, it will be interest- 

 ing to see the results of these trials in a few years. 



