TAX LANDS AND FORESTRY. 85 



Eeforestation must play an important part in the forestry work of 

 Wisconsin, for much of the state land which constitutes the forest re- 

 serves has in many case not only been cut over but also repeatedly 

 burned until it has been left almost a Avaste, without any young growth 

 coining up. However, until the reserves can be consolidated, fire lines 

 cut and rangers regularly employed, it will be a dangerous experiment 

 to plant lands that are covered with old tops, brush, etc., and are liable 

 to be burned over at any time. 



Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., March 11, 1908. 



In the Upper Peninsula we have considerable cut-over land which has 

 been left to itself after the lumberman has reaped his harvest. We 

 have all kinds, from heavy clay to light sand. I think it can be safely 

 stated that in almost every case where the land has been divested of its 

 matui"* forest, either by fire or the lumberman's and wood chopper's 

 operations, nature sets about repairing the damage and reforesting be- 

 gins, with some kind of growth which, if undisturbed, would eventually 

 result in another forest ; but not, necessarily, of the same species found 

 there before. 



The curse of the whole proposition is the fires which periodically 

 sweep over the country, one year in one place and another year in some 

 other section. I believe it would not be out of the way to state that 

 you can figure the cut-over and abandoned lands will, on an average, 

 be burned over at least every fifteen years — and that does the busi- 

 ness. As things are, with that menacing him, it is idle for any man 

 to devote time and money to reforesting. The big fires of the dry sea- 

 sons, when once started, sweep over those growths of young timber, 

 largely evergreen as they are here, as they would through prairie grass. 



You ask if I know of cut-over lands where there has been some natural 

 regeneration of either white or Norway pine, or spruce and fir or tama- 

 rack? I certainly do. We can point you to many such places back of 

 here. Less, however, of white and Norway pine than of the others you 

 mention. 



So far as my observation goes a reseeding of white pine, after white 

 pine has been cut from the land, is not the rule; but it does happen. 

 Some of it began to reforest with Jack pine, spruce, balsam, birch and 

 other inferior growths and, here and there in large patches, with a fine 

 growth of- white and Norway pine. They grew vigorous and thick ; too 

 thick in some places for a mature growth, and stood high above our 

 heads. A fire swept from the east over a portion of that section a year 

 ago last summer, cleaning ofiE the old cutting absolutely, so that one 

 could see a quarter of a mile in some directions, and not a green tree 

 was left in its path. The growth I mention had been going on for, 

 probably, ten to fifteen years. It wiped out, perhaps, between two and 

 three hundred acres of as beautiful a regrowth of white pine as one 

 could wish for. 



On some sandy hills in a large swamp to the southwest of us, where 

 had been cut a growth of merchantable pine, is now or was last fall, a 

 fine reforesting of the land, mostly white pine, covering fifty or sixty 



