72 PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 
freely to all who will bind themselves to plant and cultivate them according to 
such practical directions as the Departments should furnish. 
Certain tracts could be reserved and forest plantations established on the 
Western Prairies, and where at least a portion of the seedlings might be grown in 
Nursery for distribution. 
A very moderate sum of money, if rightly expended in this direction, 
would demonstrate the capability of such lands for growing every variety of 
hardy timber tree and shrub. 
EXPERIMENTAL FORESTRY. 
The Government has been extremely liberal in its endowment of the 
various Farm Experimental Stations. 
\Vhen internal improvements are asked for, Congress has seldom refused 
to make large appropriations for such purposes, and when it was thought that 
some of our semi-desert lands could be converted into woodlands, laws were 
enacted which, it was hoped, would secure such results, and tracts were 
given to settlers who would plant a part of them with some kind of timber. 
But the subject was a new one and some mistakes were made in the 
provisions of the law which has made them ineffective to a great degree. 
Men who accepted the provisions of the law were unable to comply with 
its full intent for various reasons. 
As a rule they were not able financially to purchase trees, plants, seeds 
or cuttings of the better class of woods, and were obliged to resort to such 
trees as could be obtained at the least cost, from native thickets near at hand. 
which were usually cottonwood or willow. 
Left to their own resources, with slight knowledge of forestry or the 
growing of trees, far away from extensive nurseries where information might 
be obtained, it could scarcely be expected that many of these tracts would 
become valuable forests. or that the settlers would be able to accomplish a 
work requiring skill. labor and a certain amount of funds. 
It must certainly be acknowledged that forestry is entitled to equal con- 
sideration by our Government. it being a duty to coming generations as a par- 
tial equivalent for our past wastefulness. 
