FORESTRY. 375 



father, and until up in the sixties I continued to travel over 

 that country; and looking back over the years that have passed. 

 I am greatly encouraged in the matter of forestry, and I am 

 happy to be able to say to you that from my own personal 

 observation between here and the Gulf of Mexico, there are 

 more than a thousand trees growing now where there was one 

 growing when my father tirst took me over that country. It 

 is impossible to determine what the original country was, 

 whether wood or prairie. 



I have during the last fifteen years visited portions of south- 

 ern Kansas and the Indian Territory where m}^ father herded 

 large herds of cattle, and where there was not a tree in sight 

 from our tent door, and now you could not tell, looking in any 

 direction, what there was originally, timber or prairie. This 

 is true, that all that country from the chaparral country of 

 Texas to Kansas today has more than a thousand acres of 

 timber where it had one when I was a boy. The same almost 

 is true of Nebraska. In northern Texas there are great plains 

 reaching many miles from streams, that were originally the 

 herding grounds of cattle; today they are simply forests. 

 Looking from our log cabin where I spent my boyhood on the 

 bottoms of the Missouri River, there was not a tree standing, 

 except some that had been standing when we took possession 

 of that plantation. My father planted some trees here; he 

 planted a large number of cottonwoods and other trees native 

 to that country. I planted trees there when a boy on that old 

 prairie farm. Thirty- five years later I went back. The old 

 cabin had disappeared; there were traces of the old well and 

 the foundation of the chimney, but all around there were mag- 

 nificent trees as big as my body, and you could not tell, looking 

 as far as the eye could reach over the prairies, we could not 

 tell whether it had been a prairie or timber country. The 

 same is true of all the country, and it seems to me that all this 

 timber was created for the wants of man, for fuel and for 

 shelter, and that a good Father stands ready and has already 

 provided by the laws he has established to give it to us. 



It occurred to me to make these suggestions in view of the 

 discussion we have had here, and I trust I have not been con- 

 sidered as intruding myself upon the society. [Applause]. 



