436 



Canadian Forestry Journal, March, ipi6. 



"Proper Reforesting" 



By Ralph H. McKee, 

 Head of Pulp and Paper School, University of Maine, Orono, Maine. 



The planting and growing of 

 trees deserves the same care and 

 consideration as the planting and 

 growing of other crops. The abori- 

 oines grew varieties of wild wheat 

 and oats. The present day up-to- 

 date farmer uses carefully chosen 

 hybrids and as a consequence has 

 varieties that will yield more than 

 sixty bushels of oats and thirty of 

 wheat per acre under conditions 

 which, with the original wild vari- 

 eties from which these crosses 

 ("hybrids") were obtained, the 

 yields would be but four bushels per 

 acre for the oats and two or three 

 for the wheat. 



Almost all our crop plants culti- 

 vated to-day, whether grown for 

 .their roots,' seed, fruit, stalk or 

 flower, have, by similar crossings of 

 the original wild varieties ,been de- 

 veloped to give yields from five to 

 thirty times that of which the 

 original wild varieties were capable. 



Faster Grozuers. 

 With trees, the present method of 

 reforestation is to plant seedlings of 

 the original wild varieties and the 

 trees obtained are naturally no 

 larger and no faster growing than 

 the wild ones from which they 

 sprung. I wish to plead to-day for 

 the introduction of the modern 

 scientific methods, that have been 

 found valuable with other crop 

 plants, to the growing of trees for 

 wood for making paper pulp. In 

 other words, I wish to plead for a 

 careful study of the hybrids formed 

 by crossing the varieties of trees 

 that are related to the woods at pre- 

 sent used for pulp wood, with the 

 expectation that the hybrid varie- 



ties thus formed will be very much 

 faster growers and make at least as 

 good quality pulp wood as any we 

 now know. 



Enough has been done by Bur- 

 bank, Henry, and others on the 

 crossing of trees for other purposes 

 to show that this expectation of in- 

 creased size and speed of growing 

 has a strong basis in its favor. 



Henry has called attention to the 

 fact, that first crosses of trees, as of 

 other plants, are remarkable for 

 their size, rapid growth, early and 

 free flowering, longer period of life, 

 the ease with which they can be 

 multiplied, and in all probability, 

 their comparative immunity from 

 disease. 



Burbank produced in 1897 a hy- 

 brid walnut as a cross between the 

 European walnut and the California 

 walnut. Three of these trees in 

 fifteen years each measured eight 

 feet in height and six feet in girth. 

 In these the timber when cut show- 

 ed annular growth rings one inch in 

 width. 



Walnut Crosses. 



Another cross between the Cali- 

 fornia walnut and the Atlantic coast 

 walnut was at sixteen years one 

 hundred feet in height and nine feet 

 in girth. This, you will agree, is an 

 astonishing size for such ordinarily 

 slow growing trees as walnut. 



These walnut crosses were not 

 made for lumber, but only for their 

 fruit and indeed so far have con- 

 tinued to be grown solely for their 

 fruit. 



Henry states that in England a 

 certain hybrid willow "often attains, 

 in fourteen or fifteen years from the 



