a eae a” 
57 
may often have to be resorted to. The value of these pines lies not 
only in their frugality, their adaptability to poor soils—soils that are 
really unfit for farming—but also in their gregarious habit, since they 
thrive in great numbers together and thus facilitate exploitation, and 
also in their capacity of developing a large number on a small area, 
which, together with the great length of their trunk, produces large 
yields; and, finally, in the character of their wood, which will at all 
times insure for their product an almost unlimited market. 
The White Pine will thrive on 90 per cent of all sandy areas of north 
Wisconsin and on all loam and clay lands; it grows fast and in very 
dense stands; is useful for pulp at 30 years of age, for box boards at 50, 
and makes lumber at 80 to 100 years. According to the experience in 
Massachusetts and New Hampshire, groves 60 years old cut over 30,000 
feet shook boards per acre, and furnish trees 12 to 20 inches in diameter 
and over 70 feet in height. These New England groves, which have 
largely sprung up on old abandoned farm lands and are generally with- 
out any particular management, are reported to furnish in the aggregate 
from 30,000,000 to 50,000,000 feet per year. 
Red (Norway) Pine is even more frugal than White Pine, and there 
is no sandy area in northern Wisconsin which this tree can not be made 
to cover with an abundant growth of fine timber. The Jack Pine is 
the most frugal tree of all, and, though of small stature and short-lived 
in Wisconsin, will prove a valuable aid in connection with the other 
pines and especially as nurse tree on the poorest sands. 
To encourage the hard woods will not be necessary, except in some 
localities. Wherever abundant now they are growing well. and are 
likely to be continued in the wood lot of the farmer on all clay and loam 
soils. It may safely be predicted that the hard woods in the better 
hard-wood counties will be abundant for many years. The hard woods 
do not thrive on most of the land here considered ‘forest land.” ‘They 
refuse to grow on the sands, yield light, cut wastefully, and furnish a 
product which, however valuable intrinsically, will for a long time have 
to contend with a limited and exacting market. 
To those who are astonished at the mere idea of planting forests and 
who scorn European methods as impracticable in this country it may 
be of interest to know that in Saxony, where the most intensive kind 
of forestry is carried on, an area of 400,000 acres, or about two-thirds 
as large as Lincoln County, brings the State a net income of nearly 
$2,000,000, furnishes regularly every year to consumers about 20,000,000 
cubic feet of wood, so that pulp mills and sawmills have long become 
permanent institutions, and that in this State, where forests are largely 
planted with nursery stock, the sylvicultural work of planting, sowing, 
etc., all told, amounts, on an average for the entire woods, to 10 cents 
per acre per year, and involves only 6 per cent of the total expenses, 
which in this case include all logging operations. 
Whether all these efforts will pay as long as the land is held by 
