A Few Practical Suggestions. 



N THIS PAMPHLET the Forestry Commission 

 has gathered a few cuts illustrative of the growth 

 of forest trees from the seed, the thought being to 

 illustrate how rapidly trees grow into value for 

 timber purposes, and that one does not need to 

 think, when he plants trees for timber, it is not for himself 

 hut for his children or possibly his grandchildren. One of 

 these views is of an elm, the seed of which was planted on 

 the farm belonging to the President of the Michigan Forestry 

 Commission in the spring of 1879. This tree has had no 

 advantage of rich soil, but grows in loose gravel forty-five to 

 fifty feet above the general water-table. At the height of 

 eighteen inches from the ground it measures sixty inches in 

 circumference. Another plate contains the picture of a white 

 pine of the same age as the elm, and stands less than twenty 

 feet from it; it would cut a twelve-foot log larger than a 



great many that are Moated to market, having a circumference 

 of forty-seven inches at the place where it would naturally 

 be sawed off for lumber. 



There are several plates taken from a young forest of six 

 acres planted on the same farm ten years ago. These trees 

 were some of them yearlings planted in rows each way as one 

 would plant corn, others were grown from seeds planted in 

 the same manner. The one view of locust trees from a cor- 

 ner of the young forest shows a number of locusts that were 

 planted two years previous to the starting of the main forest 

 growth. That is to say, they have twelve years' growth from 

 the seed, and they would today give a product of one fence 

 post of a good fair size and two fence stakes for each tree. 

 This is an object lesson in rapidity of growth which, in itself, 

 ought to be a stimulant to tree-planting in all regions where 

 fence posts are getting scarce and high in price. There is no 

 timber of rapid growth that will make such excellent and 

 permanent posts as the locust. Red cedar and osagc orange 

 may rival it in value, but they are both of such slow growth 

 as not to be in the same class. 



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