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the people in this locality are deploring the denuding of the land 

 on this account." 



The Outlook also prints a letter from Mr. Alfred Gaskill, state 

 forester of New Jersey. It runs as follows : 



" It is sometimes difficult to be patient with those who urge 

 the abolition of Christmas greens for the sake of the forests. To 

 what better use can a tree be put than to gladden half a dozen, 

 or half a thousand, child hearts on Christmas Eve ? Is the lum- 

 ber from a whole forest worth one telling of the legend of the 

 Weilinaclitsbainn ? But the hope expressed in your issue of No- 

 vember 28 that there may be a way to have Christmas trees and 

 forests too leads me to say that the fears of those who love the 

 forests more than the children, or at least seem to do so, are 

 groundless. If every family in this land had a fifteen-year-old 

 Christmas tree every year, they could all be grown without diffi- 

 culty on a third of a million acres, or less than one seventh of the 

 forest area of this little State of New Jersey. Of course the cut- 

 ting of trees as now carried on in Maine and elsewhere looks 

 destructive, and often is destructive, yet the trouble is not with 

 the business but with the way it is conducted. In other words, 

 Christmas tree growing can and should be a regular industry. 

 The trees can come in part from necessary thinnings in lumber 

 stands, in part from plantations made for the specific purpose. It 

 is quite as legitimate to plant a piece of land with balsam for 

 Christmas trees as with peach trees. Both kinds will be cut 

 down at about the same age. Several property-owners in this 

 State are definitely planning to grow Christmas trees on land 

 that is now yielding no valuable crop. The planting will con- 

 vert ugly brown slopes to hills of green, for some years at least, 

 and the venture promises to be a paying one. 



" With respect to greens the case is not very different. The 

 supply now comes mainly from waste places and is gathered by 

 poor people who get their Christmas in that way. Holly is a most 

 beautiful tree and its wood is valuable, yet scarcely a specimen 

 found north of Virginia would yield as much in lumber as in 

 greens. Laurel, or Kalmia, is the most generally used woody 

 plant, and that use, too, ought to be legitimate. There is no de- 



