134 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



planted? No. What must be the result? An entire devastation of 

 our forests, a treeless country, and what that means is well known to all 

 members of your association. 



The time in this state is not far distant when the grave song to the last 

 extensive forest will sound through the land, which song will also be the 

 grave song to the prosperity of the farmers and horticulturists; it will be the 

 signal for the disappearance of the water in our lakes and in our great Mis- 

 sissippi; it will mean the most fearful electrical storms at one time, while 

 at other times long, lasting drought will visit the country; and all these 

 the more as our neighbor state, Wisconsin, will have followed our exam- 

 ple and will have silenced the echo of the woodman's axe. Dakota and 

 Iowa, in despite of their efforts to plant trees, will be treeless states. 



Gentlemen, this is no exaggeration, it is history, told in all those coun- 

 tries where the forests have disappeared, and it will take place in our 

 state as certainly as night follows day. Then equal causes produce equal 

 effects and equal consequences, and to the observer of nature the fact can 

 not be denied that the danger signals are already making their appear- 

 ance, and cannot have escaped the sharp eye of Minnesota horticulturists 

 for meteorological occurrences. 



In the face of such disastrous results that follow the destruction of 

 forests in a country, naturally the question arises: 7s there no remedy? 

 The discouraging answer "2Vo" meets our question, not as long as the 

 present practice is upheld. Not talk shall replace and preserve the forests; 

 it requires action, immediate action, united, determined action. 



Will preservation of the still existing forests serve as remedy against 

 total destruction? 



We may just as well forbid one of the here present gentlemen to har- 

 vest his ripe crop of strawberries as to say to the lumberman, preserve 

 these forests even if they are ripe for harvesting, until the best trees of 

 the same are rotten and decayed, consequently unfit for the market. 

 Forest trees as well as other crops come to maturity at certain age and if 

 not harvested at the proper time valuable capital is lost and nobody has a 

 benefit of it except woodpeckers and coons. The most natural and finan- 

 cially most profitable time for harvesting timber is at maturity and if 

 another harvest is the object to replace the same by three year old plants 

 as soon as possible, so as to give the young plants the benefit of using the 

 deposited substances by the cut down trees before the sun or atmospheric 

 influences send the same into the universe. 



Now, Mr. President and gentlemen of the convention, please allow me 

 to recommend to you one way by which a great gain to success may be 

 realized, and if an earnest effort is made and an unanimous actiou on your 

 part is taken, failure in this instance is, in my opinion, impossible. 



As the last big extended forest in the extreme northern part of our state 

 is in danger to be soon divided into homesteads, and thereby the exist- 

 ence ofathe same becomes questionable, the reservoir for the Mississippi 

 river destroyed, an entrance to the full blast of the north wind to the 

 state opened, and the great benefits of this present forest to agriculture 

 lost, it becomes the duty of your influential body as well as the duty of 

 every citizen in this state, to petition the present legislature to send an 

 appeal to congress against the division of this forest to settlers, but give 

 to the state the privilege to save this forest for all future time as state 



