WORK OF THE FOREST SERVICE IN NEBRASKA. 



Special Article Written by Charles A. Scott, Who Is In Charge 

 of this Work of the Government. 



The work of the Federal forest service In Nebraska in previ- 

 ous years has been thoroughly discussed In former articles 

 In The Twentieth Century Farmer and I will confine my re- 

 marks entirely to the work of the last two years. ~ As my 

 work has been almost wholly In connection with the federal 

 reserves within Nebraska, I will speak first of what has been 

 done there. These reserves, as most of you know, are situated 

 In the sand hill regions of the state, and they are practical- 

 ly treeless. Our purpose is to plant the area within their 

 bounds, approximately 225,000 acres, to trees that will in time 

 supply the local demands for timber. Up to the present time 

 we have planted about 1,000,000 trees on 1,000 acres of land. 



On beginning this work many new problems confronted us. 

 It was the first such undertaking the government bad attempt- 

 ed. The question of .what species to try arose. This was 

 discussed and threshed over by men of authority on trees, 

 and the list simmered down to two trees that were likely to 

 •ucoeed, the jack pine (Pinus Dlvaracata), and the western 

 yellow pine (Pinus Ponderosa). Up to the present time both 

 ere proving to be valuable. In addition to these two, we are 

 giving the red spruce (Pseudotsuga Taxifolia), a good trip J, and 

 It is promising well. We are now almost convinced tliat the 

 red pine (Finns Besinosa), will do well in the sand hills, and 

 It will be given a trial as soon as seed can be secured. 



Another question that arose was, how and where can we get 

 ■atisfactory stock for planting? The advisability of using wild 

 seedlings in preference to nursery grown stock, was thoroughly 

 discussed. It was decided that nursery grown stock would 

 undoubtedly be more successful, but the species wanted were 

 not on the market in such quantities as we would require, and 

 we would have to grow our own stock. It would require three 

 years' time to prepare nurseries and grow the seedlings. The 

 forestry officials and the public were anxious to see a begin- 

 ning made, so we resorted to extreme measures. We shipped 

 in wild seedlings from the forests of the Black Hills of South 

 Dakota and the sand barrens of Minnesota. The result was, we 

 learned and profited by success and failure. The results have 

 been freely given to the public at all times, and I am' glad 

 today to tell you more about the results of our work. 



In the beginning let me say that we cannot attribute any 

 of our failures to weather conditions, for the summers of 1903, 

 1904 and 190B have been very favorable. The winter of 1903-1904 

 was very dry and probably Injured us some, but not severely. 



