FORESTS are necessary to protect our streams and water- 

 sheds. Without them streams become uncertain rivers, 

 flooded in spring and dry in summer. 



They are of distinct benefit for shelter, thus equalizing our 

 climate. As an example, we may take Western Minnesota, 

 which fifty years ago was a treeless region, hot winds in sum- 

 mer drying up the crops and the cold Northwesterlies in the 

 winter made it almost impossible for a settler to keep him- 

 self in comfort. To quote a report from the Hon. L. B. Hodges, 

 written in 1877, in the Ninth Annual Report to Governor Pills- 

 bury, we find this statement: 



"The most prominent men of the state have organized a 

 State Forestry Association with the chief object the ultimate 

 redemption of our own portion of a treeless region of the 

 North American continent. 



"We have accomplished enough to know that this vast tree- 

 less tract of 13 million acres only needs the intervention of a 

 tree planter to supply the only thing needful, fifty million of 

 forest trees produced within twenty years where none stood 

 before, is nothing to brag about. We must do better in this 

 direction if Minnesota is to maintain her rank as the greatest 

 wheat producing state in the world. 



"We brag over our crop of forty million bushels of wheat in 

 this year of our Lord 1877, but it is in fact, one of the solemn 

 duties of every true Minnesotan to brag about it in season 

 and out of season and yet, we have scarcely reached into the 

 borders of our thirteen million acre 'out-lot' for a few sam- 

 ples in making up the forty million bushels. When we have 

 succeeded in dotting that 'out-lot' with groves and wind-breaks, 

 it will be just as easy to brag over a crop of one hundred forty 

 million bushels of wheat per annum." 



That is forty years ago. The region became dotted with 

 groves. The pioneer moved on and now that "out-lot" is one 

 of the most fertile in the state. 



H 



