12 CONFERENCE OF GOVERNORS. 



have done a large amount of planting, in order to keep pure the 

 source of their water supply. Private individuals and companies 

 have purchased abandoned farms and pasture land, and have 

 planted it as an investment. Boxboard companies and stave and 

 heading manufacturers have taken up planting to provide future 

 supplies for their factories. Not including old plantations that 

 have been cut, approximately 25,200 acres of forest have been 

 planted in New England. It is estimated that 5,000,000 board 

 feet of white pine and 34,000 feet of hardwoods could be harvested 

 to-day from plantations in New England. 



Most of the white pine plantations have been established within 

 the last few years, and will not be ready to cut for twenty-five 

 or thirty years. Two hundred million feet is a conservative esti- 

 mate of what may then be obtained. From the trees that have 

 been planted during 1908 about 60,000,000 feet can be obtained 

 when the plantations become merchantable. And only a begin- 

 ning has been made towards rendering productive the immense 

 area of land in New England which can be devoted to forest growth 

 better than to anything else. 



If the 2,500,000 acres in New England that need planting are 

 set with trees, it will mean the production of 50,000,000,000 feet 

 of timber, or twenty-five times as much as was cut in New England 

 in 1900. The profits of such an undertaking will be millions of 

 dollars. It will mean in many parts of New England the building 

 up again of a forest industry. 



A good beginning has been made by each of the New England 

 States in the framing of good forest laws, and in demonstrating 

 to the people the practicability of forest planting; but the key- 

 note of success in this whole work rests upon good fire laws, rig- 

 orously executed, and a realization by the people of the great 

 need there will be in the future for a local supply of timber. 



