180 ANNUAL KEPORT 



but also to a great extent protects his adjoining neighbors, who, in 

 common with him, enjoy the wealth he has developed, and he can 

 no more prevent them from the enjoyment thereof, than from the 

 benefits of sunlight or rainfall, which are the common wealth of 

 all God's creatures. Hence I take the ground that it is not only 

 eminently proper, but that it is the duty of the State, in every 

 suitable way, to aid by appropriate legislation in the development 

 or creation of this sort of common wealth. Further on in this 

 paper, if I find I have room, I shall advert more fully to the press- 

 ing necessity of State and national legislation for the protection 

 and encouragement of forestry, and if I succeed in stirring up 



THE WHOLE LEGISLATIVE MENAGERIE 



to a realizing sense of their duty in this behalf, I shall feel that 

 I have not lived in vain. Forestry, in its true sense and meaning, 

 as I understand it, consists in the planting, cultivation and man- 

 agement of larger areas of ground than has been attempted; in the 

 rearing of long lines of wind-breaks or belts of forest timber, so 

 arranged as to arrest the force of prevailing winds; in the care, 

 protection and preservation of our native forests, and in encourag- 

 ing and protecting and assisting nature in the re-habilitation 

 of extensive tracts of original forests that have been destroyed by 

 fire, and where, Phoenix-like, a new crop of young forest trees are 

 springing up from the ashes. In its broadest sense, its scope is 

 larger, but so far as we are practically concerned, this is about the 

 size of it. The development of new forests and the preservation 

 of the native forests in Minnesota are the particular subdivisions 

 of forestry which more nearly concern us. Geographically located 

 as the State of Minnesota is (on the eastern border, and including 

 within her boundaries a portion of that immense interior treeless 

 region which stretches from the southern limit of the Staked 

 plains in Texas to the Saskatchewan, and nearly to Hudson's bay 

 on the north — from Eastern Kansas and Nebraska, Western Iowa 

 and the Big Woods of Minnesota on the east, to the foot hills 

 of the Rocky Mountains on the west — practically taking in 20 

 degrees of latitude and 10 degrees of longitude — in round numbers 

 covering 1,00(>,000 square miles, or 640,000,000 acres — euoagh for 

 4,000,000 farms of 160 acres each, and room for 20,000,000 of 

 people) the subject under discussion is necessarily one of great 

 local interest to Minnesota, as well as to the nation at large. This 

 vast '' interior " region is 



