FORESTRY. 395 



The little strip of sheltered country behind the grove can have had 

 scarcely any effect on the general climatic conditions. The same 

 effect mig-ht have been produced by a fence or the walls of a house. 

 The g-reat storm waves that sweep over our country are thousands 

 of feet in height, and it is probable that they travel with nearly the 

 same velocity over the tops of trees as over the open ground. The 

 friction produced by the trees on a few feet of the lower stratum of 

 the moving air mass must have a very trifling effect on the stately 

 progress of the storm. It has been claimed, too, that with the re- 

 moval of forests the rainfall of a country is diminished, and that 

 with the planting of trees the summer shower becomes more fre- 

 quent and reliable. Ohio was once a well timbered state, but now 

 the forests have been almost wholly removed. The most careful 

 study of the rainfall there has failed to sliow that there has been 

 any change in the amount of the atinual precipitation since the first 

 settlement of the state. 



Forests are of slow growth under the best of conditions, and take 

 many years to mature their crops. They can only be made to pay 

 on waste land where the climatic conditions are right. The rich 

 corn and wheat lands of western Minnesota — the black prairie lands 

 — are too valuable to raise forest crops on. Besides this we have no 

 reason to believe that forests will ever succeed on the prairies — i. e., 

 that they will ever produce paying crops of naerchantable timber. 

 Probably, the rainfall is insufficient. 



The most promising tree for forest planting on the prairie is the 

 native bur oak; but many generations of men must pass away while 

 it is maturing a crop, and then it is likely to be short in body and 

 bushy on top. The Cottonwood is a valuable timber tree when grown 

 on rich alluvial bottoms, producing great saw logs whose value is 

 but beginning to be appreciated; but on the prairie it is short-lived 

 and unsatisfactory. There is little in its habit of growth to encour- 

 age us in the belief that the prairie Cottonwood will ever produce 

 valuable saw logs. The box elder grows rapidly on the prairie, and 

 matures early, but it is always small, and never will produce timber 

 fit for the sawmill. White maple is the best all round tree for plant- 

 ing on the prairie, but it is apt to be broken by winds and split 

 down by snows; there is as yet no evidence that it will produce on 

 the prairies the valuable timber that we know it to be when grown 

 in its native river bank habitat. Our native green ash is always a 

 small tree. Our while elm grows to good size on moist bottoms, but 

 it would hardly pay to raise a crop of it even there, much less so on 

 dry prairie where it scared}^ succeeds without good cultivation. 

 Many kinds of willows will grow on the prairie; but who of us is 

 sure that a willow forest will ever produce merchantable timber? 



These are facts and we may as well look thein squarely in the face. 

 How much more reason then is there for taking prompt measures 

 to preserve the natural forests in the northern parts of the state? 

 No more swamp land ought to be granted away there to railroads. 

 No more timbered school land ought to be sold. The state's title to 

 all timbered land acquired at tax sales ought to be perfected, and 

 the legislature ought to be prohibited by constitutional amendment 

 from ever selling it. An intelligent forestrj' policy ought to be 

 adopted, and measures taken to stop forest fires. As crops of tim- 

 ber mature the stumpage or the product ought to be sold under 

 careful restrictions, so that the forest should be preserved, to the 

 end that the state forests should always remain a source of perma- 

 nent income to our noble commonwealth. 



