22 ANNUAL REPORT OF 



of some of the logs which were being sawed were only 

 four inches in diameter. 



The land itself, when cleared, would bring scarcely a 

 dollar an acre, so here was a revenue of $90 an acre in 

 fifty years, from a piece of non-agricultural land, by raising 

 white pine, which is more than most farmers get from 

 agricultural land after deducting the cost of labor and 

 other expenses. I doubt if white pine will grow as rapidly 

 in Northern Minnesota as it does in Southern New Hamp- 

 shire, still it is clear that our non-agricultural land would 

 yield a fair net profit if planted with pine. 



An acre of white pine on abandoned land in Farming- 

 ton, N. H., yielded in fifty-one years 48,000 feet, board 

 measure, worth there probably #8 a thousand, or #384 

 gross earnings of an acre. What forestry science needs 

 first in this state is, that public opinion be aroused and 

 instructed so that the legislature will give the subject 

 the attention it deserves. It is the tendency of people 

 to waste their sympathy or indignation on what is hap- 

 pening ten thousand miles away, to the neglect of 

 affairs at home. If forestry science is to be popularized 

 its principles must often be repeated. They are, that 

 forest is to occupy only non-agricultural land; that it must 

 be crowded when young so as to promote height growth; 

 that the forest is to be permanent, and, after it reaches its 

 normal condition, no more is to be cut in a year or series 

 of years than equals the increment, or growth, of the entire 

 forest for the same period, the cutting to be done so as to 

 promote natural reproduction. The forest is to be treated 

 as an inviolable capital, and only so much taken from it 

 per year, or series of years, as will yield a fair revenue. 



AN IDEAL FOREST. 



Let us suppose that, eighty years ago, a man owned 

 80 acres of land that was too hilly, or too sandy, or too 

 rocky for successful agriculture, and that he then began 



