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We cannot say that we have done so, if by destroying our forests we deprive them of 

 a supply of timber, and prevent the moderating influence exercised in nature by trees, 

 without having made an effort in compensation, by re-planting, for the destruction we 

 have caused. Our successors will not only need timber for building purposes and fuel, 

 but they will require the moderating influence of trees on the atmosphere to render 

 the soil productive, and thus give them a fair chance of existence. Long ere new 

 timber can be grown will the present supply be exhausted, and even the abundant de- 

 posits of coal will not be sufficient to supply the demands that will be made on them 

 for fuel, when the supply of wood will be exhausted in the United States and Canada. 

 If there were no- other, and far more urgent reasons why we should plant trees, I 

 would say the immense improvement in the apperance of the country that would result 

 from such general tree planting as I have indicated, should be a suflScient incentive to 

 persons not totally blind to the beautiful, to devote at least one day in each year to 

 tree planting. Who does not admire the beauty of a row of thrifty, vigorous trees 

 growing at the roadside, and who, while driving along a dusty highway, has not longed 

 for the cooling shade of such trees. To encourage tree-planting along the roadways, the 

 owner of the adjoining soil should be given a proprietary interest in the trees planted 

 alongside his land. But not only would the appearance of the country be improved by 

 a row of trees on each side of the road, but if each farm-house were surrounded with a 

 cordon of evergreens, the effect would, in a few years, be so striking that we would feel 

 ourselves a thousandfold repaid for the trouble and expense of planting them. In fact 

 it is surprising that people should be content to spend the long winters of our northern 

 •climes with nothing life-like to look upon. Everything the eye falls upon reminds it 

 of death. There is nothing life-like to be seen, nothing to remind it that winter will 

 not last always, but that the summer will in due time return with its green trees and 

 fields. A cordon of evergreen trees around a farm-house gives it a cheerful, inviting ap- 

 pearance even in the most dreary wintry day. It gives rest to the weary eyes when 

 nature all around is shrouded in white. 



But the only value of such evergreens around a farm-house would not consist in 

 their appearance or their use as wind-breaks. They would in a few years become the 

 most efficient conductors of electricity ; the protection they would give in this way 

 would soon put an end to the business of the lightning-rod men. It need hardly be said 

 that a farm well planted with trees along its boundary and division fences, and having 

 evergreens about the buildings, would at any time, other things being equal, sell more 

 readily and at a better price, than one destitute of trees. The enhancement of the value 

 of a property by planting trees on it should of itself be a sufficient reason to induce 

 men to plant trees extensively. 



There is another, and, perhaps, to many men the most important reason why we 

 should plant trees; their commercial value should induce every farmer to engage in tree 

 planting as a source of gain. While some kinds of trees require many years before 

 they have grown sufficiently large to make their wood valuable, others require but a few 

 years growth. Mr. Budd, of Iowa, who has grown trees largely, says : A grove of ten 

 acres (of white ash), thinned to six feet apart, containing 12,000 trees, at twelve years 

 were eight inches in diameter, and thirty-five feet high ; the previous thinning paying all 

 expenses of planting and cultivation. Ten feet of the bodies of these trees were worth, 

 for making bent stuff, etc, forty cents each, and the remaining top ten cents, making a 

 total of $6,000 as the profits on ten acres in twelve years, or a yearly profit of $50 per 

 acre. Mr. Everett is said to have sold twenty-three acres of black walnut, of twenty- 

 three years' growth for $27,000, or $50 per acre for each year's growth. What farmer 

 can make an equal amount by growing grain or raising cattle '? It may be a long time to 

 wait — from twenty to sixty, and even a hundred years, as is the case with some kinds of 

 trees — for a harvest ; but when it does come it is all the more valuable. It, however, 

 does not follow that because the harvest is so far distant, that he that sows it will most 

 likely never reap it, that therefore he will have no reward for his labour. The value of 

 the crop even if not ripe increases with each year. It takes very few years until a pro- 

 perly planted forest will yield sufficient returns by the sale of the thinnings to pay for the 

 labour and the interest on the money invested. 



