104 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



eight feet apart each way by replanting each year all that may have died 

 during the year. Application should be make July 1 to 15 to state auditor 

 for blanks. The assessor records your answers to the questions on the 

 blank. In all cases two freeholders, residents of your town, must attest 

 your statement, together with the assessor's acknowledgment of its valid- 

 ity. It must then go to the county auditor for attestation, and when it 

 reaches the state auditor, and all is right, you get your bounty. But woe 

 to him who swears fraudulently. "Better for him that a millstone were 

 hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea." 



There is no analogy between a crop of wheat or corn and a forest grove. 

 Trees are not annuals; they belong with the centuries for successive gen- 

 erations. The man who raises them cannot monopolize their benefits if he 

 tries. In a climatic and sanitary sense they are not his alone, though on 

 his own farm. As wind-breaks they protect whole neighborhoods, impart- 

 ing salubrity to all the air we breathe. They are educators of patriotic 

 and aesthetic character. Along these lines of use they intrinsically are 

 above all price. Surely the state can afford to improve the general pros- 

 perity, healthfulness and beauty of its vast domain. 



DISCURSIVE. 



HOW TO SAVE THE TREES. 



The indiscriminate destruction of forests is a waste of material in wood 

 and water, an injury to the animals and the soil, and an insult to the 

 aesthetic taste of man. It should be prevented by law and by public opin- 

 ion. There are abundant reasons for practicing what 'is called scientific, 

 i. e., common sense forestry in the interests of the lumber trade, agricul- 

 ture, the fisheries, and the preservation of water power for mills, and of 

 water supply for cities. The value of the crop that can be gathered with 

 little labor from a forest area on the average of a century, compares favor- 

 ably with the crop that can be raised with great labor after the forest is 

 cleared away and the rain is allowed to leach the soil until it becomes un- 

 productive gravel. * * * The influence of the forest on the general 

 welfare of the community is so decidedly beneficial that it behooves Min- 

 nesota to promptly take steps to preserve the generous woodland that she 

 has inherited from the past centuries. Certain areas must be permanently 

 cleared for agricultural or other purposes, but all that is not thus treated 

 should be kept covered with groves or forests. 



