190 1 



AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 



73 



Forestry Interest in scientific for- 



in the South. estry is rapidly increasing 

 in the South. A prelim- 

 inary examination has been made by the 

 Division of Forestry of the U. S. De- 

 partment of Agriculture of the large forest 

 in Polk and Monroe counties, Tennessee, 

 owned by Senator George Peabody Wet- 

 more, of Rhode Island, and examination 

 has established the suitability of this tract 

 for sustained forest management. Work 

 will now be begun and pushed in making 

 a working plan for the forest, which con- 

 tains 84,000 acres of hardwood timber. 



The Division has also received from the 

 South two other important requests for 

 expert assistance in forest management. 

 The first is from the Okeetee Club, which 

 owns 60,000 acres of Shortleaf Pine land 

 in Beaufort and Hampton counties, in 

 South Carolina. Mr. Overton W. Price, 

 Superintendent of Working Plans in the 

 Division of Forestry, will make a prelim- 

 inary examination to ascertain whether a 

 working plan for the tract is feasible. In 

 addition to Shortleaf Pine, this tract con- 

 tains Cypress in the swamp lands, and also 

 some hardwood timber. The Okeetee 

 Club's tract borders on the Savannah river, 

 with markets by water and rail at no great 

 distances. The other request to the Di- 

 vision for assistance comes from north- 

 western Georgia, where a preliminary ex- 

 amination of 16,000 acres of Shortleaf 

 Pine is wanted. 



Massachusetts "There seems to be 

 Wood Lots. little doubt that, for the 



present at least, White 

 Pine is the best timber crop for the aver- 

 age Massachusetts farmer. The wood is 

 always in demand, having no substitute at 

 all comparable to it, and our supply of the 

 first-class article is in this State (Massa- 

 chusetts), as largely elsewhere, nearly ex- 

 hausted. White Pine springs up readily 

 almost evervwhere on worthless pasture 

 land or sandy wastes where hardly any- 

 thing else of value can grow. Among the 

 Berkshire hills it appears to be the only 

 antidote for the all-encroaching shrubby 

 cinquefoil, crowding out the pest when 



nothing else avails. Everywhere it seems 

 begging to show what it could do with 

 only a chance if man were not too obtuse 

 to take the hint. There are thousands of 

 acres of this poor cheap land in Massachu- 

 setts lying idle or growing up with young 

 Pine which farmers often take more pains 

 to destroy than all the labor they would 

 need to put into its cultivation, cutting 

 and burning it over to get for their cattle 

 a barren pasturage not fit for goats. 

 With a small investment of labor and 

 capital all this land might soon yield a 

 good revenue both to its owners and to 

 the State, except by the seashore, where, 

 affected by the salt water, White Pine will 

 not grow, and there its place is taken by 

 Pitch Pine, which also might be turned to 

 better account than it is. White Pine, 

 too, yields perhaps the quickest and largest 

 returns of any valuable timber tree in this 

 State, and there is little risk in its cultiva- 

 tion except from fire. But when land 

 owners all over the State are raising high- 

 priced timber, public sentiment will de- 

 mand more stringent laws for the preven- 

 tion of forest fires and will see that they 

 are executed." 



"While clearing out old and inferior 

 growth from the wood lot the remaining 

 ti-ees, the crop to be cultivated, should be 

 thinned and thin bare spots be filled in by 

 planting or natural seeding. A natural 

 woodland properly managed should more 

 than double its value in twenty years, when 

 many of the larger trees will be ready to 

 cut at a good profit, while the wood taken 

 out meanwhile by weeding, thinning, and 

 pruning yields just as good a return as 

 though cut in the ordinary way, merely 

 for its own value." Mrs. M. L. Tucker 

 in the Transactions of the Mass. Horti- 

 cultural Society. 1900. Part I. 



More Forestry Among the recent appli- 

 in the Adiron- cants to the Division of 

 dacks. Forestry for advice and 



assistance in the manage- 

 ment of its woodlands is the Moose River 

 Lumber Co., which owns a tract of 16,000 

 acres in the Adirondacks (N. Y.). This 

 tract is mostly spruce land and is situated 



