264 AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 



will become the first of its kind, and its contribution to the cause 

 of forest conservation in the United vStates will be of great economic 

 and scientific value. 



After the arboretum has been established, planted singly 

 and in groups will be every inij)ortant tree species with which 

 experiment under local conditions of soil and climate will justify, 

 and visitors will thus have ample opportunity to study the value 

 of trees of many kinds for ornamental planting, but the object 

 lessons of enormous economic significance which will lie spread 

 before their eyes will be blocks of planted forest in each of which 

 has been set out one or more kinds of trees of commercial importance 



By this course Letchworth Park will aid materially in laying 

 an exact scientific basis for the successful extension of practical 

 forestry in the United States. Every practical step will be taken, 

 not only to insure results of the highest scientific value from 

 forest work at Letchworth Park, but also to develop its usefulness 

 as an object lesson to all park visitors." 



I wish with all my heart that this object lesson were in its 

 full fruition. But I do not need to say to foresters that forest 

 trees grow slowly not fast. So possibly after five years, certainly 

 in ten, the Letchworth Forest arboretum will have some useful 

 forest lessons to teach; for by that time the little trees will be 

 up in forest formation. 



In th^ meantime we are making experiments with diiTerent 

 species; and we are doing some things which will, and which 

 will not, and which perhaps, may work! All men must do such 

 things who would find out new and useful facts for the uses of 

 other men. 



I am hopeful that the Letchworth forest arboretum will 

 be only a beginning. I wish to see such forest arboreta estab- 

 lished in other regions of the United States; one for example, in 

 the southeast, in the region of the southern pines; others in the 

 Rocky mountains; others on the Pacific coast; and above all 

 in the far southwest where trees are needed more than anywhere 

 else in all America. 



This then, is the central idea in the forest arboretum at 

 Letchworth Park — to help so far as it can tree planters and there- 

 fore foresters to bring back trees successfully upon land where 

 trees only can be profitably grown. 



Just a w(jr(l in closing this whole matter of forestry. 1 believe 



