higher prices resulting. Enough has been said to convince all that the 
only hope for the future prosperity of great areas of our State lies in re- 
foresting. In the first place, reforestation should be urged upon the 
present land owners. Many an acre of untillable soil could be planted in 
black locust, catalpa, black walnut or shell-bark hickory with good pros- 
pect of speedy returns upon the investment. Wealthy men, interested in 
the preservation of game or fish, should be encouraged by favorable laws, 
or otherwise, to purchase large tracts of the hill lands of the State, and 
to plant them in timber. 
Our State has already made a good, although very small, beginning 
in forestry. In the writer’s opinion it would be the highest economy for 
the commonwealth to purchase and reforest tens of thousands of acres of 
her rougher hill lands along the Ohio and other streams. These lands are 
almost valueless for agricultural purposes. Covered with a growth of our 
most useful trees, they would in time return a rich revenue to the State; 
they would again become covered with soil; the present unsightly and un- 
profitable gullied fields and yellow clay points would disappear; the loose 
soil and leaf mulch resulting would again absorb great quantities of 
moisture, reduce the immediate run off, and hence diminish the volume 
of the flooded streams. At the same time the ground water supply would 
be greatly augmented; our late summer rains would be more numerous 
and more copious; wells and springs would be more permanent and give 
larger volumes, and our most severe drouths, destructive to all life, 
prevented. 
The probabilities are, however, that private enterprise alone will 
never restore the forests to our hills as fully as the best interests of the 
people demand, hence the State and Nation must be called upon to take a 
leading part in reforestation. 
[4—21363 ] 
