Canadian Forcslrij Journal, April, 1!)}7 



1065 



The Dawn of Forestry in China 



How the Chinese people are slowly 

 realizing the practical benefits of 

 forestry practice in a land so grossly 

 denuded is apparent in the following 

 excerpts of a letter written by Mr. 

 Joseph Bailie of the College of Agri- 

 culture and Forestry, Nanking, China 

 to Prof. J. W. Tourney, Director of 

 the Yale Forest School, under date 

 of Dec. 28, 1916: 



Since my return from the United 

 States in the end of September, I have 

 been trying to gather the threads of 

 the work into my hands. The most 

 gratifying feature is the -manner in 

 which the Chinese themselves are 

 developing what is in their hands. 

 As you are aware, the Colonization 

 Association is so organized that, al- 

 though we foreigners may give ad- 

 vice, the whole authority and re- 

 sponsibility is in the hands of the 

 Chinese. 



The second day after our return, 

 my wife and myself paid a visit to 

 Purple Mountain, and to my delight 

 I found that not only had all the trees 

 that had been planted before I loft 

 Nanking for the United States been 

 protected, but that tens of thousands 

 more had been planted, some on part 

 of the old estate and some on places 

 that heretofore we were not allowed 

 to take charge. 



A Good Beginning 



You may remember that when 

 H. E. Chang Chien was Minister of 

 Agriculture and Commerce, he grant- 

 ed our Nanking Branch of the Col- 

 onization Association the whole of 

 Purple Mountain. Though this grant 

 had been made in Peking, it was with 

 difficulty that we gradually took in 

 piece by piece, owing to the chaotic 

 state of land laws and land tenure in 

 this district. However, during my 

 absence of the past year, the Com- 

 mittee has extended its control over 

 the greater part of the mountain. 

 Nor has this control been an empty 

 name; the volunteer trees that would 

 spring up and make forests in at least 



one-third of the vacant lands of this 

 province, if protected, have been 

 actually protected on the whole of 

 Purple Mountain. This means that 

 millions of these sprouts are now left 

 standing. The usual thing is to cut 

 these young sprouts along with the 

 grass every year and carry all off 

 when dried as fuel. Thus we have 

 several sections of the mountain be- 

 ginning to show' signs of forest growth. 

 Not only so, but the neighbors bord- 

 ering on our mountain, seeing the 

 common sense of what we are doing 

 are also leaving young saplings to 

 grow into trees, in places where here- 

 tofore all were cut off every year along 

 with the grass, so that for miles be- 

 yond our mountain other mountains 

 are now beginning to show that 

 hundreds of the surrounding farmers 

 are learning from us. This is per- 

 haps one of the most encouraging 

 features of our work, namely, that in 

 so short a time so many are following 

 in our footsteps. 



But the progress made is not only 

 in trees. More poor families have 

 been given land to break up on the 

 parts of Purple Mountain that have 

 been taken charge of by our Com- 

 mittee. 



Eighty Families Prospering 



At Lai An Hsien where there is 

 another Branch Colony, the work has 

 gone steadily on, until now there are 

 over eighty families, numbering over 

 400 individuals, now settled among 

 the mountains which less than three 

 years ago were a. wilderness and the 

 only use to which they had been put 

 was to cut a small quantity of the 

 grass and brush for fuel, the great 

 bulk of the mountains being burned 

 over every year. These eighty odd 

 families are nearly all on their own 

 feet now. This wet year, while 

 drowning out the crops of a great 

 many farmers on the level lands, was 

 just the thing for these people on the 

 mountains, and the result w^as that 

 their crops were on the average better 



