CONSERVING THE FORESTS. 397 



that particular feature of the forestry question of the state. Mr. 

 Gregg has planted and has grown on his farm trees, groves, I 

 may say forests, on land that yesterday was in the semi-arid belt 

 of the state — although it was conspicuous for its absence last 

 summer — but it was there, and the trees would not grow well if 

 at all. But he has demonstrated that trees can grow there, and 

 he has made in a few years what was a prairie farm into a 

 farm that I have told him looked like an old New England 

 homestead two centuries old. Mr. Gregg is only one of a few 

 men who is doing this kind of work, and when we are advo- 

 cating this larger measure of forestry in our state we are not 

 unmindful of what citizens are doing, and if the members of the 

 legislature could be inspired with only one-half the enterprise 

 and the public spirit that is being manifested by those individuals 

 who are planting forests to the best of their ability all over the 

 state, I would be extremely hopeful of satisfactory progress. 



I recall my experience in the state, now about twenty years 

 — and I traveled over sections of the state that were once tree- 

 less; you could see no tree in any direction as far as the eye 

 could reach. I remember sixteen or eighteen years ago travel- 

 ing over a section of the country. I had been traveling across 

 it for a half day and had seen no tree anywhere, but finally 

 looking away across the prairie, way down on the horizon, I saw 

 something that looked like a belt of green. I asked the gentle- 

 man with me, "What is that?" He said, "It is Mr. So and So's 

 tree claim or timber belt." There it was, a very conspicuous part 

 in the landscape, and as we drew closer to it it began to get 

 larger and more beautiful, and finally we came up to it, because 

 I wanted to interview its planter. I traveled over the same 

 country two years ago, but it has lost its peculiar charm, and 

 that timber belt was no longer conspicuous because it had neigh- 

 bors all around it. The aggregate of trees where a few years 

 ago nothing was growing is very large indeed. It seems to me 

 that the members of the legislature in the districts in which those 

 trees and groves are growing ought to be imbued with the spirit 

 with which the growers of those groves were inspired, and if 

 those groves did not teach them the value of the forestry move- 

 ment and what the state ought to do in the way of promoting it, 

 then it seems to me impossible to teach them, they are un- 

 teachable — in fact, it does not require a great stretch of the 

 imagination to believe that some of those people are not teach- 

 able. (Applause.) 



