ROADSIDE TREES. 449 



ROADSIDE TREES. 



C. M. LORIXG, PRESIDENT. 



Gentlemen of the State Forestry Association : 



There is little for me to report regarding the work of our asso- 

 ciation during the past year, the legislature having declined to make 

 the usual appropriation for printing and other expenses attending 

 its prosecution, and, as a consequence, no literature has been circu- 

 lated and no lectures given. It was the opinion of members of the 

 legislature that the State Forestry Board had supplanted our State 

 Forestry Association so far as its work related to the preservation 

 of the forests and the re-foresting the cut-over lands, and this is 

 true to a great degree. But in my opinion there is work for this 

 association in encouraging the planting and preserving of roadside 

 trees, in disseminating instruction in farm forestry and arboriculture 

 as an embellishment of the farm and village home. 



Here I wish to say a word in commendation of the great work 

 which is being done by the State Forestry Board and to earnestly 

 urge upon the members of this association to give to the Forestry 

 Board aid and encouragement by urging members of the legislature 

 to make ample appropriations for the extension of its work. 



One of the most important things which the western farmers 

 have yet to learn is the value of farm forestry, and how few acres 

 of growing timber are necessary to keep a family supplied with fuel. 

 The improvidence of some of the farmers in this state in cutting the 

 timber which once stood on farms owned by them is almost beyond 

 belief. I know of instances where every tree has been destroyed, 

 not one left to shade the house and front yard. Others have been 

 more economical of this valuable asset and have nurtured the wood- 

 lot as carefully as their grain or cattle, and as a consequence have 

 had a pile of fuel each year which is a joy to the heart of good 

 housewives. In Xew England a farmer takes as much pride in his 

 wood-pile as in his barn filled with hay. I have personal knowl- 

 edge of groves of timber from ten to twenty acres in area which 

 have supplied the families of their owners with fuel for more than 

 fifty years, and there are more cords of wood standing today than 

 there were fifty years ago. The wife of a thrifty farmer living in 

 the southern part of this state told me that from ten acres they had 

 all the fuel they required and that the "woods," as she termed the 

 grove, was a source of constant pleasure to her children and her- 

 self. 



I once saw a grove of timber growing on a forty acre tract 

 that was, within the memory of many who passed it daily, a potato 



