364 Forestry Quarterly. 



earlier experiences have served to put the nursery work and the 

 planting of seedlings on a more restricted, yet more successful 

 basis, and it is to be hoped that the lessons learned will be applied 

 to the broadcast sowing. It would be extremely unfortunate if 

 this work should have to be curtailed and a large part of it 

 doomed to failure because sufificient experimental sowing had not 

 been done to demonstrate by what methods and to what extent it 

 can be successfully carried out. 



The trade situation in Southern Yellow Pine presents a rather 

 peculiar feature, a growing strength in prices having developed at 

 the beginning of the year with a rather sharp increase during the 

 latter part of the winter, particularly in the lower grades. This 

 would call for no comment if business conditions were normal and 

 the demand sufficient to justify a price increase; but it has come 

 in the face of very moderate buying and with little prospect of a 

 revival of brisk trade conditions in the near future. The com- 

 paratively small stock of material in the hands of retail dealers 

 and of wood-consuming plants at the beginning of the year, and 

 the fact that the railroads and other large consumers did not buy 

 heavily in 1910, led to the forecast that trade conditions would 

 improve during the early part of 191 1 and the demand for lumber 

 increase. This assumption has not been borne out, and the 

 lumber-consuming industries have continued to buy only in suf- 

 ficient quantities to meet necessary current needs ; so that the 

 advance in price of $2.00 to $2.50 per M. has not been justified 

 by the demand nor by the consequent reduction of the stock at 

 the mills which would result from active buying. The only 

 feasible explanation seems to be that the manufacturers, following 

 the past two years of poor business and the consequent difficulty 

 of meeting obligations, have been forced to put prices on a higher 

 basis, and having done so, are holding them up regardless of 

 general trade conditions. Railroad cross-tie prices have not been 

 advanced, but on the contrary ties have been selling during the 

 past winter at considerably less than during the preceding summer. 

 The situation as regards yellow pine stumpage is also worthy of 

 comment in the above connection, stumpage prices having held 

 firm during the past several years of depression, regardless of 

 the rather wide fluctuations, mostly downward, which have taken 

 place in the lumber market. 



