The Forest in Farm Management 17 



prairie lands of the West, owing to the exigencies of the 

 market, will sometimes yield a higher revenue when planted 

 to trees and properly cared for than any other crop will 

 average for the same period, while at the same time the 

 woodlot will be of inestimable value to the rest of the farm 

 in other ways. 



CAPABILITIES OF THE WOODLOT 



A few illustrations will demonstrate this very clearly. 

 In New England, plantations of white pine made forty 

 years ago on poor gravelly land, depleted by a long series 

 of cropping, have yielded as high as forty thousand feet of 

 box boards to the acre, worth ten dollars a thousand on 

 the stump. This was sufficient to pay 6 per cent interest 

 per annum on the value of the land and the cost of estab- 

 lishing the plantation. That was from a quality of land 

 which would not at that time have produced any other 

 crop which would have paid nearly as high returns. Yet 

 the owner looked upon this, as waste land and so little appre- 

 ciated the value of the crop that he sold it for half its value 

 without taking the trouble to investigate its true worth. 



There are throughout the New England states many 

 neglected, run-down farms that have grown up to volun- 

 teer crops of white pine. These crops have established 

 themselves without expense to the owner and have never 

 had care of any kind. In spite of this neglect, they have 

 produced crops more valuable than farm crops and have 

 at the same time rejuvenated the soil. 



Warren, in Bulletin 295 of the Cornell Experiment 

 Station, records an abandoned field in New York that had 

 grown up to such a volunteer crop of trees. This field 

 c 



