PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 69 



almost every species-if wood in the Northern states, the quantity of cellulose 

 and economy of preparing it from the wood, governing the manufacturers in 

 the selection of the timbers. 



In places it is the custom to clear everything in cutting wood for pulp, 

 even cutting spruce saplings only two to four inches in diameter. In doing 

 this the land owners are fast destroying their forests and will regret the 

 improvidence when it is too late. 



The spruce is slow to mature in a thick forest. From the seed to a tree 

 three or four inches in diameter takes, under such conditions, a quarter of a 

 century. But after becoming established in the ground, with strong root 

 system, the trees increase in size quite rapidly, providing they have space to 

 grow beneath the surface. Hence a proper management would be to thin 

 these dense thickets by cutting out everything not desired for permanent 

 stand, and these should be not closer than eight or ten feet, and much farther 

 apart for lumber purposes. 



When it is considered that paper manufacturers are on the alert for some 

 vegetable materials from which to make paper, and which shall be more 

 economical than forest products, and that successful experiments have been 

 made with corn stalks, of which millions of tons go to waste annually, and 

 with the straw from the rice fields of Texas, Louisiana and the Carolinas, and 

 with hemp, and cottonseed hulls, millet and other substances which are now 

 at least partially waste products, it should set the Maine people to thinking 

 that by their improvidence they may, ere long, drive the paper industry from 

 Maine and the east, to the Iowa and Indiana corn fields or the Texas rice 

 plantations. 



Certain it is that paper can be made from many substances besides wood, 

 for cellulose exists in very many vegetable growths which are abundant in 

 the United States. 



The best advice which can now be given the owners of timber land, who 

 are using it for making pulp, is, to spare the young spruce and fir, but to thin 

 them severely in order that the individual trees may increase in size, which 

 they cannot do in such crowded condition. 



There is no one fact in arboriculture which demands such constant and oft 

 repeated admonition as, that for economy of time, largest income for money 

 invested, and truest principles of forest management, all trees must have ample 

 room for root extension; and no advantage gained by elimination of lower branches 

 through overcrowding, can compensate for the enormous loss of time required for 

 its accomplishment. 



The ax, saw and chisel must be used to remove superfluous branches. A 

 dollar expended in labor in performing this operation saves twenty-five years 

 of time, the interest on an investment for a quarter of a century, and the dis- 

 couragement which everyone feels in holding forest property which yields so 

 slight an income. 



In proof of this assertion, it is a well known fact that millions of spruce 

 saplings two or three inches in diameter, show by their circles of growth 

 that they are twenty-five years old, and trees a dozen inches across the 

 stump have stood for three hundred years, while in every city in this land are 



