FORESTRY. 147 



on the prairie. One of the mistakes of our Timber Culture 

 Act was that it provided for trees planted too far apart. Now 

 so far as the evergreen is concerned I believe if properly- 

 planted and handled they will grow anywhere on the prairies 

 of Minnesota, but I do not believe that a man can afford to set 

 out a forest of evergreens if it is necessary to go to a nursery 

 and pay out from eighty cents to one dollar apiece for the 

 trees, but the nursery must be started on the farm. Although 

 our state has been doing well in regard to this matter, it has 

 not done what it ought to have done and we will suffer the con- 

 sequences of that neglect. I memorialized the legislature of 

 the state of Minnesota in regard to the opening of the Red 

 Lake reservation, that it would be followed by the cutting off 

 of millions and millions of feet of timber, but there was not a 

 man in that legislature that would raise his voice against the 

 opening of that reservation. 



Year by year this thing goes'on and these timber belts to the 

 north of us are being wantonly destroyed, and I believe it is 

 time for the people of Minnesota to rise up and say that no 

 more of that timber which shelters us from the winds of the 

 frigid north shall be cut away. I preached this all over the 

 state of Minnesota last winter, but it is necessary that we should 

 continue to preach it, and we should have an organized move- 

 ment in favor of such legislation as will permit no further de- 

 struction of our forests. 



I do not want to talk any longer; we could talk twenty -four 

 hours on this subject and not exhaust it. 



Now as to the matter of planting young trees; I have over 

 there on the table a few copies of the Forest Tree Planter's 

 Manual, and it has in it all the minute details for starting a 

 a nursery on the farm. 



S. H. Folsom: Mr. President, the gentleman has struck 

 the key note of this question. It cannot be discussed in ten, 

 sixteen or twenty-four hours; it is too big a subject to under- 

 take to do anything with it at all with the time we have at 

 our command. The gentleman said he could talk twenty-four 

 hours. I had prepared an article, and incidentally I came 

 across his report, and I found I had used some of his arguments, 

 and the more I examine the subject the more important it seems 

 to become, and it requires more time than a few hours to 

 state the matter as it should be stated. There is no use, as I see 

 it, to read a few papers and then let the matter go at that. It 

 seems to me that every society in the state should take it up, 



