60 ' BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



port forestry coUeg^es, or provide for forestry courses at the 



Agricultural College. Such courses should be difterent from 



those now to be had at universities like Yale, Ann Arbor, 



Harvard, and lately at Cornell. They should be mainly 



designed for the use of the farmer in the management of his 



Avoodlot, — a very different afi'air from the management of a 



large timber forest. 



State Aid. 



Of the various possible ways in Avhich the State can aid 

 private enterprise towards rational forest management, 

 besides encouragement by education and police regulations, 

 your State has chosen the method of release of taxes for 

 l)lantations. Your law is in some respects more reasonable 

 than similar laAvs in other States, yet, if you permit me to 

 say so, it is most crude from a forester's point of view, as 

 well as incongruous from the economist's stand-point. It 

 provides that "all plantations of chestnut, hickory, white 

 ash, white oak, sugar maple, Eiu'opean larch and pine timber 

 trees, in number not less than 2,000 trees to the acre, upon 

 land not at the time of said i)lanting woodland or sprout 

 land, and not having been such within five years previously, 

 the actual value of which at the time of planting does not 

 exceed $15 per acre, shall, with such lands, be exempt from 

 taxation for a period of ten 3'ears after said trees have grown 

 in height four feet on the average subsequently to such 

 planting." 



Let me analyze these provisions. First, by specifying 

 certain species, — which was done, no doubt, to secm"e what 

 was considered most valuable, — others just as valuable have 

 been ruled out, of which I Avill only mention basswood and 

 spruce, especially the Norway spruce. Only recently a 

 publication of the Bureau of Forestry declares the mixture 

 of white pine and Norway spruce, the one which was uiainlj^ 

 employed by the New York State College of Forestry, the 

 most satisfactory. Wh}' should not such a plantation enjoy 

 the same privileges as those cited? 



The height of the growth at which the tax release is to 

 begin also discriminates between species, for, while it may 

 take six to eight or more years for a pine plantation to 



