CANADIAN FOEESTRY ASSOCIATION. 91 



right up to the time the tree was ready to cut. He had figured the price 

 of the land at $3 per acre, planting $12 per acre, allowed for filling up the 

 blanks where trees died, and figured the cost of protection from fire at six 

 cents per acre per annum. He fixed the time for the growth of such a 

 forest at eighty years, and calculated 3 per cent, compound interest for 

 that term on the money expended. Then, basing his calculations on Ger- 

 man figures, he estimated the yield in eighty years at eight thousand cubic 

 feet per acre. He figured that to come out on the right side the State of 

 Minnesota would have to get $9.85 per M., board measure. This seemed 

 like a profitable scheme, since he had been informed by Mr. Aubrey White, 

 Deputy Minister of Lands and Forests for Ontario, that white pine was 

 new selling on the stump in that Province for $10 per M. What good 

 pine would be worth in eighty years they could decide for themselves. 

 Those who desired to examine his plan more in detail could find it in the 

 Fourteenth Annual Report of the Forestry Commission for the State of 

 Minnesota. 



As to the matter of sowing seed, he desired to put in a caution. All 

 the time he was employed by the State of New York he had at his service 

 eight or ten men to carry on reforestation by sowing seeds. He tried it in 

 various ways, sowing broadcast on the fields and in the woods, hacking up 

 little places and sowing without cover, sowing with cover, mulching. In 

 fact, he did everything he could think of. He had tried many plans since 

 going into Western Canada, and he desired to say, taking all his experience, 

 his success had been very indifferent. He would advise any person to go 

 slow in spending money on this kind of work until the various governments 

 had time to experiment with it. He was going to make a further test to 

 see if little screens, somewhat similar to the semi-spherical screens used to 

 keep flies from food, and with prongs to hold them in place, could be suc- 

 cessfully used to protect the seeds from wind, insects, animals, etc., until 

 they had time to germinate. 



Mr. Fields (Northumberland County, N.B.) pointed out that different 

 conditions greatly affected the growth of cone-bearing trees. An Alberta 

 gentleman told him cone seed had to be in the ground two years before 

 they would germinate. In New Brunswick, everybody knew that if a back 

 pasture were allowed to go four or five years without attention there 

 would be a growth of young spruce all over it from seeds scattered by the 

 wind from neighboring trees. In fact, spruce was almost a nuisance. 



Mr. Williams said that in Pennsylvania they had secured very good 

 results with what they called patch planting, where fires had swept over 

 'everything. The foresters went over the ground, scraped the soil with the 

 boot, dropped half a dozen seeds, pressed them with the foot or dropped a 

 little mulch on them and went on. In that way they planted seed almost as 

 rapidly as they could walk. The success was such that he estimated they 

 secured at least 95 per cent, of growth where it was properly done. An- 

 other satisfactory plan was to sow after a snowfall. The melting snow 

 carried the seed into the ground, and it germinated. Planting was not 

 neglected, however. Much of Pennsylvania could only be reforested by 

 planting. The State nurseries would give twelve or fifteen million young 

 trees per year, and they expected to plant them. 



