FORESTRY. 



EDITED KV DR. H. E. FERNOW, 



Director of the New York School of Forestry, Cornell University, assisted by Dr. John C. Clifford of the sama 



institution. 

 It takes thirty years to grow a tree and thirty minutes to cut it down and destroy it. 



TREES FOR THE PRAIRIES. 



The following paragraphs, reprinted 

 from Harper's Weekly, state correctly the 

 need of forest-planting in the West as a 

 matter of internal improvement and cli- 

 matic amelioration, to which the States 

 concerned should give their financial aid. 

 It should not, however, be expected that 

 this tree planting can in any way com- 

 pensate for the decimation of forest re- 

 sources and deficiency in lumber produc- 

 tion of the forest regions. Under the cli- 

 matic conditions of the plains and prairies,- 

 which are not of local but of_ cosmic 

 origin, the constant winds sweeping over 

 the country will always prevent the de- 

 velopment to lumber size and lumber 

 quality of even our best timber trees. Nor 

 should it be expected that the climatic 

 influence will be of a general character. 

 It can necessarily be only of a local, lim- 

 ited character, felt within limited ' dis- 

 tances of the forest cover ; for the mountain 

 ranges, which largely determine the climate 

 of the plains, will always exert a more 

 powerful influence than small plantations. 



Every time a severe drought threatens the corn 

 or wheat crop in the West renewed attention 

 seems to be called to the oft-considered and 

 much-discussed question of providing the great 

 central plains with trees to counteract in a meas- 

 ure the effects of the hot, dry winds. The small 

 farmers of Kansas and Nebraska have to a cer- 

 tain extent redeemed their farms from scorching 

 heat and drought by the construction of innumer- 

 able windmills to pump up water from the un- 

 derground reservoirs for irrigation purposes. _ In 

 wide sections of the West these home-made wind- 

 mills dot the landscape so thickly that one un- 

 consciously imagines he is in some Pennsylvania 

 oil region, where the derricks and wells cha~r- 

 acteristically mark the whole country-side. 



But excellent as these windmills may prove for 

 irrigation purposes, they are more or less local 

 in their effect, and they are of little general 

 value in staying the disastrous effects of the pre- 

 vailing hot winds when they blow in midsummer 

 across the extensive acres of growing corn and 

 wheat. Scientists decided years ago that the great 

 hope of the farmers of that section was in cloth- 

 ing the prairies with trees. The United States 

 Forestry Bureau has been making extensive 

 studies and investigations in the matter for a 

 decade past, and the State Agricultural Stations 

 have made independent experiments with trees to 

 obtain reliable data. In Nebraska and Kansas, in 

 particular, the State Agricultural experts of 

 forestry have planted trees in considerable num- 

 bers to ascertain the relative effect on agriculture 

 and the species of trees which produce the best 

 results. 



It may be decades before the plains and prairie9 

 are properly clothed with trees in sufficient num- 

 bers to make any appreciable effect on the cli- 

 mate, but that this improvement will eventually be 

 made is almost certain. Vast acreages of the 



West are unfit for farming, and if forests were 

 planted on this land the climatic effect on the 

 rest of the region would be of great benefit. In 

 Nebraska alone there are nearly 10 million acres 

 of government land that are totally unfit for good 

 farming, and only indifferent for grazing; but 

 most of it could be made to yield good timber 

 trees, which would not only produce a fair profit 

 in time to the planter, but would tend to reduce 

 the disastrous effects of the hot, dry winds of 

 summer. 



The Forestry Division of the Department of 

 Agriculture has planted at various _ times and 

 places in the West a number of species of trees 

 considered the most likely to thrive on the great 

 plains. The soil, climate, and absence of moisture 

 in the summer are effective weapons for 

 destroying the young growths of ordinary trees; 

 and so far the Scotch, Austrian, yellow, and 

 banksian pines have proved the least susceptible 

 to injury from the uncongenial surroundings. 

 From the experiments so far made it is confi- 

 dently believed that hundreds of thousands of 

 acres of sand hills and prairie land can be success- 

 fully covered with these trees. 



At the present writing the Forestry Division 

 has a number of experts in the dry regions of the 

 West making careful studies and observations of 

 the question. Their attention will be directed 

 particularly toward the reforesting of the gov- 

 ernment land in the great prairies and plains. If 

 the millions of acres still owned by the national 

 government could be reforested, the land thus 

 held of little value to-day would in time prove of 

 vast interest to one of the # greatest agricultural 

 districts of the world. It is not that this land 

 is needed for farming so much as it is for 

 growing timber. There is good farming land in 

 the West sufficient for all needs of the country 

 for the next ioo years, and its improvement and 

 development by scientific methods of agriculture 

 will be of more value to the owners and the 

 country at large than opening up new tracts 

 through artificial methods of irrigation; but our 

 forests show no excess of production over de- 

 mand, and their rate of increase is far smaller 

 than the increase in the population and general 

 demand. Here, then, is a profitable opening for 

 State, national, and individual effort, and, with 

 the reforesting, agriculture for the rest of the 

 West will be made less risky and uncertain. The 

 hot, dry winds will be tempered, the moisture of 

 the soil conserved and held for the crops when 

 most needed, and the rains themselves induced to 

 fall more abundantly in summer. 



The great treeless regions of the West must 

 eventually yield to systematic planting of the 

 right kind of trees, and the:"', under a system of 

 forest protection and cultivation millions of acres 

 will be forever devoted to the profitable propaga- 

 tion of timber that will be so ms-ch needed in 

 the future. The American forestry system is in 

 the formative stage yet; but it is broad and com- 

 prehensive enough to include the question of re- 

 foresting the. Western prairies, so the national 

 calamity of crop destruction in the corn and 

 wheat belt will be almost entirely eliminated. 

 The most successful farming is that in which the 

 uncertainty of production is reduced almost to 

 the point of extinction, and this can be accom- 

 plished in the West only # when the hot, dry 

 winds have ceased to exercise their present bale- 

 ful influence. Forestry for the prairies at present 

 seems the most hopeful solution of the problem. 



George E. Walsh. 



U5 



