56 ANNUAL REPORT 



nature's method and we have no business to criticize its way. 

 Now, wherever you find forests, that is, good, substantial forests, 

 they have not been set by the hand of man, and if men want to 

 forest this border country they must keep out prairie fires and con- 

 fine themselves just as nearly to nature's methods as possible. A 

 great many years ago I was called upon to speak on this forestry 

 question, and I made the same statement which I have just made 

 in your presence. When I settled down upon my place there was 

 a little prairie there. For two years I secured my hay upon it. 

 Hazel brush spruDg up in little patches, and by means of blue jays 

 carrying seeds, in about five years, oak trees, and hickory trees, 

 were springing up all over that prairie. I purchased the land since 

 and it cost about $20 an acre to get out that crop that nature had 

 planted there, and among it were some of the finest specimens of 

 red oak and young hickories you will find in the state of Minne- 

 sota. Now, I think if nature could have been left to herself she 

 could have spread this forest half a mile or a mile a year. Take, 

 for^instance, the timber in Fillmore county. That hasn't been 

 planted by the hand of man, but it has come there by this same 

 blue jay process and such kinds of things, and I believe there is a 

 good deal in the theory Mr. Barret has mentioned as developed by 

 a Dakotian, in mixing a large number of varieties and sowing them 

 thickly. The trees that are set out by man must be somewhat 

 crowded together as a kind of protection, otherwise they spread 

 themselves out near the ground and either beccme crooked trees 

 or so'full of knots from the ground up as to be useless as lumber. 

 I have no doubt the weeds that grew on this plantation the first 

 year were beneficial. There were not enough of them to smother 

 the trees out, and they afforded a protection from the sun along in 

 July and August, which helped them to survive. 



Mr. Pearce. Mr. President: I think there has been a good deal 

 of error in regard to planting trees on tree-claims. I think thou- 

 sands of dollars have been spent with no profit resulting. I think 

 the only way to grow forests is to grow them from seeds, and the 

 paper read by Mr. Barrett is a good one. 



I have experimented a ■good deal with different varieties of trees 

 that cannot be transplanted. The oak cannot be transplanted. You 

 can gather a bushel of seeds and plant them in the fall, and they 

 will grow in the spring and make a forest; when you take all these 

 seeds and put them on the ground thick and let them grow up, the 

 weak will die and the strong will live. Now, that is universal the 

 world over. There is only one tree out of a hundred that ought to 

 be planted. When you sow seed the weak die and the strong live 



