CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 41 



poor hands, and let them deteriorate into waste land and desert, that the same prin- 

 ciple is probably true with us. At any rate, New York is buying Adirondack lands, 

 even though she pays $3.60 per acre lor lands which she sold at five cents per acre 

 in the days when the policy was : ' Get rid of the land.' The State of Pennsylvania 

 i- following Xew York. She has a good code of laws, a good Forest Commission, 

 nearly a million acres, of forest reserves, and is buying lands at a price not to exceed 

 $5 per acre. Wisconsin passed an Act last year declaring all its lands forest reserve. 

 These lands are in scattered bodies and the case resembles your Muskoka problem. 

 Yet Wisconsin preferred to declare and hold them as forest reserve. There is wisdom 

 in this, for it is an experience of centuries, that while the private man makes the 

 best farmer, the State makes the better forester, and in most cases has made the only 

 safe and good forester. As an illustration I might mention my birth place, the little 

 State of Wurtemberg, just north of the Alps. It has been conservative in its forestry 

 matters for centuries. When the French Revolution inspired the sense of liberty, 

 some of the other German States, notably Prussia and Austria, felt called upon to 

 modify their forest laws and sell the lands to private people, Wurtemberg cjung to its 

 gains. The wisdom of this policy has been demonstrated by a century of experience, 

 and the other States are gradually returning to the point where they left off a cen- 

 tury ago. Wurtemberg as a State holds all it can, and whenever poor, dilapidated 

 farm lands are offered for sale, they are bought for forestry purposes. What the 

 land can do as forest may be inferred from the fact that as high as $40 per acre are 

 paid for such lands, and that in a country nearly one-third in forest (not waste and 

 such lands) with wood nearly as cheap as in parts of our Spates. 



To return, I wish to call your attention to the work of a few others of our States. 

 California is spending $15,000 in co-operation with the National Bureau of Forestry, 

 to find out what it has and what it ought to do. Several other States are becoming 

 active. The States of Montana, Wyoming and Washington have quit throwing away 

 lands and hold all State lands at no less than $10 per acre. Minnesota h^s a Forest 

 Commission, good fire laws and a machinery to enforce them, and is beginning to set 

 aside forest reserves. Connecticut has its forest school and a state forester em- 

 powered to buy lands, and similar activity is shown throughout the New England 

 States. 



We in Michigan have a problem similar to yours. We have the old pinery lands 

 converted into burned-over wastes, just as you see them in parts of this province. 

 Much of this land has become delinquent for taxes, about one-sixth of the area of 

 the State was reported ' in soak ' in this way. For years the State has followed 

 a liberal policy and disposed of these lands at prices from ten cents up, in order to 

 get them settled up. This has not met with the success it deserved. The State's 

 liberality was misused and we have learned that a good farmer, the kind we want 

 and need, does not take land simply because it is cheap. Michigan has adopted a new 

 policy, it has set aside a small portion of these lands as forest reserve. We hope to set 

 out 50,000 trees, and start a forest nursery this spring, and in time we hope to cover 

 a part of these lands with growing timber. We hope that the State will continue this 

 good work and keep the lands which good farmers evidently are not anxious to under- 

 take. Michigan has progressed otherwise. The University and also the Agricultural 



