86 TWELFTH ANNUAL REPORT OP THE 



sive than the use of nursery plants. For these reasons, in gathering our 

 supply of seed this year we limited the work to collecting only such species 

 and amounts as were necessary for the seed beds in the State nurseries and 

 for seed-spot plantations. As the Norway pines bore only a scanty supply 

 of cones in 1 906 , we had difficulty in securing the few pounds of seed of 

 this species required in our nursery work. 



The only plantation of hardwoods undertaken as yet was made in 1904. 

 The land selected for this purpose was a grassy field containing seventy 

 acres, situated at Canoe Point on the lower end of Grindstone Island, St. 

 Lawrence river. It is one of the numerous reservations owned by the State 

 on the south shore of that river and maintained for the free use and recrea- 

 tion of the public. From a ridge of moderate height, the highest in the 

 Thousand Islands, the land slopes evenly to the shore. It was set out with 

 plants of broad-leaved species taken from a temporary nursery which the 

 State was operating in the Catskills at that time. The species planted at 

 Canoe Point consisted of red oak, pin oak, chestnut, black locust, black 

 walnut, white ash, and hickory, 79,580 in all, mostly oak. A few acres of 

 hardwood seedlings were set out at Cedar Point also, another one of the 

 State reservations on the St. Lawrence. 



Fully one-third of these plants were destroyed during the next winter 

 by field mice, which, burrowing under the snow, gnawed the bark away or 

 cut off the stem completely. When the damage was discovered measures 

 were taken to poison the mice, and large quantities of corn meal mixed with 

 strychnine were distributed over the field. The plants which escaped in- 

 jury are now alive and doing well. As the cattle which previously pastured 

 on this ground have been fenced out the grass grows so thick and high that 

 the dead seedlings cannot well be replaced with plants of ordinary size. 

 They would be smothered by the rank, tall grass. As soon as our proposed 

 nursery for the propagation of hardwoods is established we will select large 

 plants and use them for replacing the ones destroyed by the mice. 



In 1906 we did comparatively little in the way of new plantations, 

 and confined the work to extending the area of the ones already made. 

 We could not undertake anything further as our annual appropriation for 

 reforesting was cut down one-fourth, and a large part of this fund was 

 needed for the establishment of additional nurseries, without which we 



