22 ANNUAL REPORT OF 



years produce 18,000 feet board measure. The surviving 

 trees — for the greater number would have died out — 

 would be from 12 to 15 inches in diameter breast high. 

 They would continue, if left standing, to grow many years 

 after they had reached the age of eighty years, but not at 

 a rate to earn good interest. 



If the State this year planted 37,500 acres of forestry 

 land in the same way, and continued to do as much every 

 year for eighty years, it would then have a normal forest 

 of 3,000,000 acres — not in one body but in scattered 

 localities — of the value of probably $200,000, 000, yielding 

 a net revenue of 3 per cent per annum. From the 37, 500 

 acres planted this year there could then be cut 675,000,000 

 feet board measure of logs and the same amount every 

 year thereafter perpetually. Under forestry management 

 a larger percentage of the cut-over area would become re- 

 forested by natural seeding than is the case under present 

 methods of logging (now only about 5 per cent of cut-over 

 land becomes well stocked with pine from natural seed- 

 ing), the blank spaces would be promptly replanted and 

 a sustained yield secured. 



If the State had 37,500 acres of third or fourth rate 

 land to plant with forest we would find that on an average 

 5 per cent of it was already well stocked with pine or 

 some other valuable timber, and that another 5 per cent 

 of the area was rock or water, which we would call blank 

 spaces; deducting this 10 per cent from 37,500 would 

 leave 33,750 acres to be actually planted. In other 

 words, for every 1,000 acres of third or fourth rate land 

 only 900 acres on an average would have to be planted. 



In planting about 200 acres substantially in the way 

 above mentioned the State has found that two men can 

 plant one acre a day, the whole cost, exclusive of land, 

 being about $6.00 per acre. To plant 37,500 acres each 



