292 BOARD OF AGRICULTrUK. [Pub. Doc. 



other purposes. Surely we can and ought to supply a larger amount of 

 our own home-grown woods. Although the State has been well cut over, 

 even now our present wood harvests play an important factor in the 

 industries of many of our rural sections. While we believe thoroughly 

 in conservation where it will apply, still the more potent force begins 

 further back. We need to teach the A B C of restoration in forestry. 

 When our work of reforestation shall have begun to demonstrate its 

 value, it will be an object lesson which will mean much toward perfecting 

 a better State forest policy. 



Practical forest restoration, therefore, is what Massachusetts needs 

 most. If we will reconvert our hilly, rocky, mountainous, moist, sandy 

 and waste nonagricultural lands generally into productive forests, the 

 future financial success from rural sections of the Commonwealth is 

 assured. This is no idle dream; it can be accomplished. Massachusetts 

 is a natural forest country and all that is needed is simply to assist na- 

 ture, stop forest fires and formulate constructive policies. Then we can 

 grow as fine forests as can be found anywhere. German}^ and many of 

 the countries of the old world have already demonstrated what can be 

 done. Are we to be less thrifty and farsighted? Americans do things 

 when they are once aroused, and it is believed that reforestation and the 

 adopting of modern forestry management must be given due consider- 

 ation in this State from now on. 



The writer has been delighted in following the interest that has been 

 aroused and the great tendency for all our people to not only welcome 

 and appreciate the new idea of "conservation," but to even credit the 

 term or phrase as covering every phase of new endeavor. 



It is not my purpose to lessen the glory one whit or bedim a single 

 gem in the crown of the national phrase "Conservation of natural re- 

 sources," nor could I were it to be tried, for the heralded motto has al- 

 ready stamped itself firmly upon the nation. 



As time goes on, however, it will be found that our popular phrase 

 will not carry with it the whole panacea of overcoming our wasteful 

 and depleting conditions, and that new and equally applicable terms, 

 though perhaps never so popular, will come to express more aptly our 

 real needs. 



To my mind the phrase "Restoration of natural resources" vies with 

 that of "Conservation of natural resources," and expresses a force to 

 be aroused in the nation for good that in many ways surpasses the pres- 

 ent popular one. 



We have our forest reserves and minerals that are left, and now to 

 conserve them economically is a worthy undertaking; but in the older 

 sections of the nation to conserve what we have in depleted and worn- 

 out lands and forests is to pick the bones of the withered and shrunken 

 carcass. 



Let conservation apply where it may, but the force that is needed in 

 Massachusetts and all of New England, yea, the south, extending even 

 well into the middle of the nation, following the great depleting agri- 



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