APPENDIX B 



several years, however, the plantation dropped out of 

 public sight, and no further reports were made. We 

 supposed, as probably did everybody else who knew 

 of the original planting, that the trees had disappeared 

 and that we had simply one more case of the wreck 

 of tree planting such as were familiar to us in the days 

 of the forest homesteads, known as "tree claims." 



Eight or ten years passed, and during this time my 

 reports made to the State Board of Agriculture and 

 other similar bodies contained reiterations of my sug- 

 gestions that pines should be planted in the sandhills. 

 At last, in 1901, Mr. Pinchot, then chief of the Bureau 

 of Forestry in Washington, sent out a party of foresters 

 to make careful investigation of the forest conditions 

 in Nebraska. The party was under the direction of 

 Mr. William L. Hall, and he and his men traveled 

 over the state from the Missouri River to the Wyom- 

 ing line, examining the open land, the rough canyon 

 land and also the fringes of forest trees along the 

 streams. They penetrated the sandhills at different 

 places, and in this way obtained a very good notion as 

 to the conditions throughout the state. 



During this time Mr. Hall made my office in Ne- 

 braska Hall his headquarters, and one day he came in 

 and made inquiry about a plantation of pines in Holt 

 County about which he had read in some of the early 

 reports of the State Horticultural Society. This called 

 to mind the plantation which I have spoken of above, 

 and I told him what I knew of the matter, but said 

 that I supposed by this time that the whole plantation 

 had disappeared. He made sufficient inquiry, however, 



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