TAX LANDS AND FORESTRY. 81 



EXTRACT FROM WOOD LAND TAXATION, BY JDDSON F. CLARK, IN CANADIAN FOR- 

 ESTRY JOURNAL, OCT. 1905. 



Commercial tree planting must for the present be very largely limited 

 to agricultural districts. As soon as the fire problem is satisfactorily 

 solved, it will undoubtedly be extended to large areas of wild lands 

 which have been devastated by unwise lumbering and by Are to such an 

 extent that seed trees of the valuable species are not present, thus pre- 

 cluding the hope of satisfactory natural recovery. Wherever the forest 

 still remains, however, a natural regeneration of the most valuable species 

 by a conservative lumbering of the present stand must, in all cases, be 

 regarded as the basis of the forest policy. Such natural regeneration is 

 to be preferred as being vastly cheaper and in many if not most cases 

 quite as efScient as artificial planting. 



Au Sable, Mich., April 1, 1908. 



At the present time the State is selling .large bodies of land on which 

 the timber has. grown since the lumbermen have left it which runs 

 from seedlings up to trees 8 to 12 inches in diameter. The State sells 

 this land for less than it would cost to plant the trees and the party 

 who buys the land thinks he is amply compensated if he goes in and 

 does a good winter's work. This pine is just in its first commercial 

 value and should be left to grow twenty years. All of these twenty 

 years would be commercial growth and be of larger value to the State. 



The present policy is nothing short of criminal. The State does not 

 need the money, but it does need the forests. Within twenty-five miles 

 of Au Sable there are, say, 300 square miles of area on which there is 

 no inhabitant. The few farms that were ever taken up in this terri- 

 tory have been deserted. The coming generation will need all kinds of 

 wood on this area and it should not be confined to all pine. The larger 

 areas of land around the Soo are especially adapted to the growth of 

 spruce. 



You are entirely right along your line of moving forward and secur- 

 ing the ground for present growing of trees, and, if you secure this you 

 will have accomplished a large benefit to the State. 



A very large part of the waste area is covered with Jack pine. Many 

 of them are now of merchantable value and other large areas are grow- 

 ing. In my judgment these areas should be selected for planting other 

 pines, Norways or spruces as they will act as nurse for the younger 

 trees, making them tall and straight bodied and the pines and spruces 

 will seek the light and after ten to twenty years' growth will overtop 

 the Jack pine. The Jack pine can be marketed leaving a beautiful grove 

 of straight, smooth-bodied timber. Timber planted in this way and 

 cared for will, in from fifty to one hundred years, produce from five 

 thousand to a million feet, or more, to a forty. 



Very truly yours, 



Henry Nelson Loud. 

 11 



