1900. 



AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 



223 



traveling, lobbying and agitating for leg- 

 islation, will be sufficient to start with. 

 If five hundred shares are not bought, or 

 if the necessary encouragement cannot be 

 secured from the State and Federal Gov- 

 ernments, the plan falls through. If all 

 goes well, however, a tract of say three 

 hundred and fifty thousand acres, worth a 

 dollar an acre, will be purchased and 

 planted up gradually with White and Nor- 

 way Pine. According to Mr. Schenck's 

 calculations, n per cent, of the stock will 

 be left unpaid after the entire area has 

 been planted, " the interest on which will 

 be sufficient to meet the annual expenses 

 thereafter." The probable returns from 

 the investment are stated as follows : 

 " Supposing that there will be available 

 per acre 



After 40 years, 2,000 feet b. m. at $4.00, 

 After 60 years, 6,000 feet b. m. at $5.00, 

 After 80 years, 10,000 feet b. m. at $6.00, 



our shares will have made 2j^ per cent, 

 interest per annum. If stumpage prices 

 double every twenty years we should 

 make 6 per cent, on the investment, and 



if they double in fifteen years we realize 

 as much as 7^2 pei" cent." Those who 

 wish to invest in the company should 

 write to the American Lztmbcrman, 31^ 

 Dearborn St., Chicago. 



It will be plain to any one who consid- 

 ers this proposal that the organization of 

 the company would involve the settle- 

 ment of many questions on which Mr. 

 Schenk's letter does not touch. These 

 should by no means present insurmount- 

 able difficulties, however. It would also 

 involve striking at the heart of the diffi- 

 cult and important taxation problems with 

 a definite policy. But it is all the more to 

 be hoped for these very reasons that the 

 matter will not end with Mr. Schenk's 

 letter. Almost nothing is risked, and even 

 if the company should get no further than 

 its appeals to the Legislatures its members 

 could hardly grudge it their lost deposits 

 of five dollars. Apparently there is no 

 appeal to a legislature like one in which a 

 note of selfishness can be discerned, and 

 the company could not fail to do the cause 

 of forestry an immense amount of good. 



NEWS, NOTES AND COMMENT. 



The 

 Forest Garden, 



" One of the best 

 ways to see tree flow- 

 ers is to climb one of 

 the tallest trees and to get into close ting- 

 ling touch with them, and then look abroad. 

 Speaking of the benefits of tree climbing, 

 Thoreau says : ' I found my account in 

 climbing a tree once. It was a tall White 

 Pine, on the top of a hill; and though I 

 got well pitched, I was well paid for it, 

 for I discovered new mountains on the ho- 

 rizon which I had never seen before. I 

 might have walked about the foot of the 

 tree for three score years and ten, and yet 

 I certainly should never have seen them. 

 But, above all, I discovered around me 

 it was in the middle of June on the ends 

 of the topmost branches, a few minute and 

 delicate red, cone-like blossoms, the fertile 

 flower of the White Pine looking heaven- 

 ward. I carried straightway to the village 



the topmost spire, and showed it to 

 stranger jurymen who walked the streets 

 for it was court week and to farmers 

 and lumbermen and woodchoppers and 

 hunters, and not one had ever seen the like 

 before, but they wondered as at a star 

 dropped down.' 



" The same marvelous blindness pre- 

 vails here, although the blossoms are a 

 thousandfold more abundant and telling. 

 Once when I was collecting flowers of the 

 Red Silver Fir near a summer tourist resort 

 on the mountains above Lake Tahoe, I 

 carried a handful of flowery branches to 

 the boarding house, where they quickly 

 attracted a wondering, admiring crowd of 

 men, women and children. ' Oh, where 

 did you get these? 'they cried. 'How 

 pretty they are mighty handsome just 

 too lovely for anything where do they 

 grow ? ' ' On the commonest trees about 



