FOREST PLANTING. 125 



trees were planted. The experiments were the more 

 valuable on this account, as proving that it involved no 

 extraordinary outlay of capital or labor. And it is the 

 more encouraging from the evidence it affords that the 

 careful culture which should be bestowed wherever the 

 work of forest planting was systematically undertaken 

 would be amply rewarded. 



The question naturally arises, by whom are these 

 plantations to be made? The United States Govern- 

 ment is obviously the party most largely interested, be- 

 ing the largest proprietor, and the lands being at present 

 almost valueless for want of timber, yet susceptible of 

 attaining an enormous value within twenty or thirty 

 years, by a judicious system of forest planting. A com- 

 pany has recently been organized in Kansas, which com- 

 prises the names of several very able and reliable men, 

 who propose to commence and carry out an extended sys- 

 tem of forest planting if they can get from Congress a 

 grant of land sufficient to warrant the undertaking. They 

 ask a grant of one section of land for every mile, from 

 Fort Dodge, Kansas, to Pueblo, Colorado, 270 miles 

 and propose to plant eighty acres of forest on every sec- 

 tion, and to make an experimental station every few 

 miles, for the purpose of testing every variety of tree 

 that could be of any practical value to the country for 

 fruit, ornament, fuel, timber or shelter. The wisdom of 

 giving liberal encouragement to such enterprises is mani- 

 fest, and at the outset it is essential that government aid 

 should be extended. After the system is once fairly in- 

 augurated it will prove self-supporting and work its own 

 extension. 



