154 North American Forests and Forestry 



stated it above, these men would have discovered 

 the fact long ago and gone into the business of 

 raising young forests. The lumber business is 

 usually conducted by corporations which continue 

 when their officers die, so it cannot be a reluctance 

 to invest in an enterprise from which returns do 

 not come in one's own lifetime. Moreover, these 

 concerns have such great means that they could 

 well afford to have a portion of them tied up in 

 Wisconsin during the time when the new growths 

 were slowly maturing on the cut-over lands, while 

 with the rest of their capital they were harvesting 

 the original pine in the South. Then why do they 

 not do it ? 



Some of the answers occasionally given are quite 

 insufficient to account for this singular circum- 

 stance. One of the commonest objections heard, 

 at least in the Lake region, to any plan for the re- 

 stocking of denuded lands with pine, is that the 

 pine will not grow there again. I speak of pine in 

 this connection, because with its allied soft-wood 

 species it will always furnish the greater portion of 

 material for the lumber industry. This notion is 

 based on an erroneous analogy drawn from agricul- 

 ture. People imagine that a rotation of crops is 

 needed in the raising of trees as well as of grain, 

 while for reasons we need not discuss here the case 

 is quite different. Observation, if well directed, 

 will easily convince one of the fallacy of this no- 

 tion, for in all parts of the pine regions of Michi- 

 gan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ontario, young 



