out even the 2,000-acre planting plan of the past, considering rises in 

 costs. It certainly is not enough to carry out the 4,500-acre planting 

 industry. 



Why exactly 4,500 acres, with some concrete facts in relation to 

 decided on as the real requirement of Michigan's state-owned forest 

 costs and returns will be the leading topic of the next article. 



ARTICLE VIII. 



In what has recently been written in these articles on the reclama- 

 tion of Michigan bankrupt lands by means of a plan to restore the 

 forests that once grew on them, the word "rotation" has been several 

 times used, and probably not clearly understood by some readers. 



Rotation of crop, in the case of a forest crop, means substantially 

 that while two-year-old seedling trees are being taken out of the 

 nursery and planted on the barren lands or in open spaces in the 

 woods, earlier plantings have been growing toward maturity, each 

 year's planted area being a 12-month step toward the goal. In the 

 future years, when the state forester and his men shall begin 

 harvesting Michigan's first timber crop, others of his men will be 

 setting out on other lands "trees" that would make you laugh to look 

 at, if you were wholly uninformed and out of sympathy with the 

 work. These seedlings two years old are about as high out of the 

 ground as your shoetop, and it is not till you fall to admiring a sturdy 

 young tree shoulder high in the field and have been told that it has 

 been there, say, seven years, that you begin to realize what forestry 

 and forest cropping means. 



BASIS OF PLAN. 



Cutting off the matured crop at the end of the row and setting out 

 spindling plants at the nursery end means rotating the crop. A simpler 

 rotation than rotation of an agricultural crop, where one kind of crop 

 is made to follow another, year by year done in agriculture for the 

 land's sake, principally. 



"Of course we wouldn't want to cut off the whole crop of trees at 

 one time, if we could," said Marcus Schaaf, state forester. "It takes 

 too long to grow a crop. Constant supply of forest products is what 

 is aimed at." H*ll 



This is the basic reason, for the 4,500-acre planting plan .of the 

 Michigan Public Domain Commission. More particularly, the 4,500- 

 acre area is the allotment oL total acreage in view for annual plantmg 

 on the whole enormous state plantation, that the whole plantation 

 may develop each year its proper area of matured crop. No need to 

 inquire just how the state forester and the others arrived at this 

 figure one can afford to accept something from the paid experts 

 without mangling his brain trying to master the intricacies of the 

 science. 



THE DOLLARS INVOLVED. 



Now, as to the dollars involved, in outlay and return. 



It has been stated, earlier, in perfect confidence, that t'he $55,000 

 the commission is getting cannot be expected to finance the 2,000- 

 acre planting plan of the makeshift present. This is what the state 

 forester tells the commission will be the necessary investment for the 

 4,500-acre plan for a period of years reaching out to maturity of the first 



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