MINNESOTA FORESTRY. 447 



to give us some tax-title lands, but it was so circumscribed and 

 amended that it was of comparatively little value in the interests 

 of forestry. An amendment was put in requiring the county 

 commissioners to certify before the forestry board, before the 

 forestry board could get an acre of land, that the land was 

 totally unfit for agricultural purposes. No county commission- 

 ers wanted to proclaim that they had any land that was totally 

 unfit for agriculture. We have not been able to obtain any land 

 in consequence, except a few hundred acres in Cook county, and 

 we had to have a petition to obtain that. We ought to have 

 that tax-title law amended. 



Then we need a little money to administer the Pillsbury 

 reserve, which was explained to you by Prof. Green. As he has 

 told you, we have a nursery there of about an acre on which are 

 growing some six hundred thousand seedlings. He estimated 

 that about six or seven thousand seedlings, three years old last 

 spring, ought to be planted. Assuming that there are only 

 five hundred thousand, they will cost the state only one mill 

 apiece. That nursery cost the state only $500.00, and we have 

 frames and screens which will last several years. The nursery 

 has cost only five hundred dollars. We must have some ground 

 in which to plant those seedlings. There are enough to plant 

 two hundred and fifty acres, and it will cost ten dollars an acre 

 to plant them, for which all the land is selected and needs only 

 clearing. 



Then we ought to have some money to take care of these 

 twenty thousand acres of the Burntside Forest, because, in good 

 faith, we ought to take care of that land. 



These are some of the things we want of the next session of 

 the legislature, because forestry cannot make progress without 

 the means to do it — and I wish you to understand that every 

 dollar properly used in forestry means an improvement. It is 

 like putting money in a savings bank, because the experience of 

 every European country that practices forestry is that the in- 

 come from forests averages three per cent net compound in- 

 terest annually ; and when you put your money into forestry in 

 this state and have invested it, it is as good as government 

 bonds, and you get a return of three per cent compound in- 

 terest, and you get it when the forest becomes a normal forest. 

 Remember that on this waste land there is hilly, rocky and sandy 

 land — the only land we want for forestry — and the average pine 

 reaches merchantable size not until it is eighty years old. It 

 takes eighty years before you get a forest into normal condition 

 from which you can receive returns. Hence the state must do 

 it, because individuals will not Avait so long for returns. 



