33 



to the selectmen and land owners throughout the Commonwealth, 

 with most promising results. 



The proposition is arousing attention everywhere. Hundreds of 

 acres of waste land have been offered to the State at nominal cost, a 

 considerable portion of it being offered as a free gift. Such over- 

 tures have come from West Brookfield, Spencer, North Ashburnham, 

 Hubbardston, West Tisbury, Westford, Sharon, Gardner, Oxford, 

 Winchendon and Sandwich. A business concern has pledged itself 

 to donate 100 acres of land in southern Massachusetts, and an indi- 

 vidual in Hampshire County has come forward voluntarily with an 

 offer of 300 acres. This movement among land owners to turn over 

 their idle property to the State, brisk at its very inception, substan- 

 tiates the general supposition that there is in Massachusetts a vast 

 acreage of land that has become unprofitable through indiscriminate 

 and unbusinesslike lumbering. It shows, further, that the owners 

 of this property have lacked the incentive, or the means, or the 

 inducement, to tie up their capital on soil where the returns are so 

 remote. Now comes their opportunity to let public capital develop 

 their land and restore it to a paying condition on better terms than 

 private effort could do ; and many of them are quick to see that this 

 is a wise policy, even if it takes away conditionally their title to the 

 property. On these terms the State is getting a wide choice of land, 

 ,and when it has registered enough to permit of proper selection, the 

 actual work will begin. There seems to be no doubt now about the 

 ability of the forest department to get all the land it can handle. 



While the deed in these transactions passes the land over to the 

 State, it provides that the original owner may repurchase within a 

 stipulated period, at the price he received plus the money spent on 

 improvement and 4 per cent, interest. In all probability the re- 

 planting can be done by the State at less cost than by private effort, 

 because the State has the work reduced to a science, and a corps of 

 trained men to execute it. Not only are individuals accepting this 

 proposition, but townships have taken it under consideration, with 

 a view to turning over to the State sections of poor farms and water- 

 sheds for the planting of trees. 



Both in accepting free and in buying land, the State will give pref- 

 erence to tracts situated along highways, where the new plantation 

 may serve the dual purpose of restoring the lumber stock and demon- 

 strating to the public how the work should be done. 



THE COLLECTION AND USE OF OTHER FOREST TREE SEEDS THAN 



WHITE PINE. 



Now is the time to collect certain forest tree seeds. One crop of 

 the forest is gone, the white pine, and another is ready for the 

 harvest. In years gone by the pine seed has been wasted in Massa- 

 chusetts; it was wasted this year, too, but it attracted more attention 



