CHIEF FIRE WARDEN. 23 



to plant it with white pine, an acre each year. The work 

 was continued by his son, and the last one of the 80 acres 

 was planted this year. You have then, on a small scale, 

 an ideal forest. You can begin this year to harvest the 

 crop by cutting the acre that was first planted, the timber 

 on which is eighty years old. On this acre a new crop of 

 pine will soon start up from seeds which have fallen from 

 neighboring trees. If all the surface is not reseeded 

 naturally, then the bare spots must be planted. Next 

 year you can cut another acre, and so on. In eighty 

 years more the acre that was planted this year will be 

 ready to cut. When the trees first came up, or were first 

 planted, they stood very thick, four thousand or more on 

 an acre; they competed for air and fight, which promoted 

 height growth; the weak ones died out, and at the end of 

 eighty years the acre first planted contained, perhaps, 

 1 50 sound trees. But these trees will probably average 

 each 500 feet, making for the whole 75, 000 feet, the prod- 

 uct of one acre. If the pine should be standing near 

 good roads or populous communities it might be worth, 

 as it stands, 15 per 1,000 feet, or 1 3 75. 00. This may be 

 too high an estimate for the yield on merely sandy soil, 

 but it is not an excessive estimate for a moist and loamy 

 soil, sheltered from strong winds. 



SHOULD LAY THE FOUNDATIONS OF SUSTAINED FOREST YIELD. 



Today we are cutting fifteen hundred million feet of 

 pine in our Minnesota forests each year, but in twenty 

 years the demand on our forest resources will be far 

 greater than now. We should begin to lay .the founda- 

 tions of sustained forest products because nature will work 

 with us. It was Frederick the Great who started forestry 

 in Prussia, and the people of Minnesota can do as much 

 for their state, if they will but give the matter attention. 

 Fortunately we have not the incentive that he had, when, 



