502 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



It is ridiculous to try and keep up the 

 arbor day practice of planting new trees, 

 with the destruction of old trees to new 

 plantings going on in the ratio of 10 or 

 more to one. 



Destruction of the forests by their op- 

 pressed owners means a rapid loss of the 

 wood pulp supply for newspaper use and 

 the wood supply for all kinds of commercial 

 and domestic purposes, with the resultant 

 drought, with no fish in the streams, as 

 there will be but little water in them; and 

 no game in the woods, because there will 

 be not forest for the game to hide in. 



There must be no discrimination in favor 

 of country as against city woodlands, or 

 else woods in the cities, where they are the 

 most necessary and appreciated, will all be 

 destroyed before those in the country are 

 cut down. Right here in Boston prominent 

 people are refusing to plant shade trees 

 about their residences because they will be 

 obliged to clean them of tree-moths. This, 

 of course, greatly injures the tree nursery 

 business, as the woodland owner cannot 

 afford to clean his trees and doesn't care 

 whether the moths kill them or not; for if 

 he is saved the, to him, wasteful expense of 

 cleaning them, he can still use them for 

 firewood at least, and perhaps other pur- 

 poses just as well as if they were alive, and 

 so the argument that if he doesn't clean 

 his trees they will be killed, has not the 

 slightest effect to cause him to clean them, 

 as it has been previously clearly shown that 

 it will not pay him to do so. 



Therefore, no further appropriations of 

 any sums of public money for reforestra- 

 tion or for tree-moth cleaning should be 

 made in this state until the tree-moth clean- 

 ing laws are so modified as to prevent the 

 owners from being forced to cut down their 

 woodlands, owing to the legal right of the 

 authorities to force upon them the cost of 

 anj' such cleaning. 



All the woodland owners, together with 

 the farm owners throughout every state, 

 should at once join together in an active 

 campaign before the coming primary elec- 

 tions and oblige each candidate of every 

 party to publicly declare whether or not 

 he will use all his efforts to have the pres- 

 ent tree-moth laws so modified that the 

 tree-owners will no longer be oppressed or 

 forced to clean their trees, or any tax or 

 other charge at all for any cleaning be 

 forced upon them. 



Illinois 



A bulletin on "Forest Conditions in Illi- 

 nois," recently issued by the State Labora- 

 tory of Natural History, cooperating with 

 the United States Forest Service, shows 

 that about 2,000,000 acres, or about five 

 and one half per cent of the land area of 

 Ihe state is forest, chiefly in the southern 

 part of the state or near streams, and 

 about ninety per cent is owned by farmers. 



The bottom lands of the Wabash and 

 Ohio rivers formerly contained the largest 

 hardwood trees found in the United States. 

 Nearly 100 kinds grew in these forests and 

 giant sycamores and tulip trees were esti- 

 mated to reach a height of about 200 feet. 

 Little remains of these virgin forests, and 

 nothing has been done to assure future 

 growth of such timber. 



In addition to these bottomland forests, 

 in the southern part of the state, there 

 are also those of the hills and of the up- 

 land plains. The hill forests are composed 

 mainly of oak and hickory, supplemented 

 by a variety of secondary kinds walnut, 

 maple, beech, red gum, tulip and cucumber 

 trees; while the upland plains forests con- 

 sist of a preponderance of oaks, intermin- 

 gled with hickories or on wet grounds with 

 post oak. 



The forests of the northern part of the 

 state are mainly confined to the vicinity 

 of streams: and some few counties that 

 were almost completely forested as Cal- 

 houn and Jo Daviess are not much cut 

 over. The lowland forests of the northern 

 parts are composed of elm, cottonwood, 

 birch, oak, willow, and sycamore, and the 

 upland forests of oak, hickories, cotton- 

 wood, red elm, cherry and rarely aspen, 

 black birch, paper birch and white pine. 



The present forest products are varied 

 including lumber, railway ties, mine tim- 

 bers, cooperage supplies, box materials, 

 charcoal, fence posts, fire wood and nuts. 

 It is advised that every well-managed farm 

 should have its wood lot just as it should 

 have its vegetable and fruit garden, and 

 for the same kind of reasons it should be 

 cared for to insure a future crop. 



A recommendation is made that a state 

 board of forestry be created, a state fores- 

 ter appointed, forest lands purchased for 

 demonstration purposes, and a force of fire 

 wardens organized. 



