25 



$1,045,660,000. Supposing that these 200,000 acres will, in 

 the natural course of events, produce, during the same time, 

 one hundred cords of fire-wood to the acre, worth six dollars 

 a cord, amounting to $120,000,000, and subtracting this sum 

 from the net yield of the larch, we have left, as created wealth, 

 the respectable sum of 1925,000,000." 



Mr. Sargent, however, admits that this is farming on paper, 

 and that considerable allowances should be made for such 

 contingencies as fire, tree diseases, insect attacks, and other 

 dangers now unforeseen. Robert Douglas of Illinois, who has 

 had far more experience in larch planting than any other 

 American^ writes me that the larch in this country is remark- 

 ably free from all disease and insect depredations. 



My special aim has been to encourage the recuperation of 

 sterile lands by tree planting. The experiments of thus 

 reclaiming barren tracts, which have been tried on a large 

 scale in many European countries, prove the superiority of the 

 larch for this purpose over all other evergreens, because it is 

 deciduous. Grigor says: " No tree is so valuable as the larch 

 in its fertilizing effects, arising from the richness of its foliage, 

 which it sheds annually. The yearly deposit is very great ; 

 the leaves remain and are consumed on the spot where they 

 drop." Trees also enrich the soil by a curious chemistry 

 which disintegrates even the rocks, and transmutes their par- 

 ticles into forms of life and beauty. The radicles and rootlets, 

 in their underground laboratory, secrete acids which dissolve 

 the very sands and stones. 



The frequency of forest fires is urged as an objection to 

 tree-planting. Here is a real discouragement ; but forests are 

 no more likely to be burned than are our barns and dwellings. 

 More property is consumed every year by the burning of 

 stores and houses in this country than by forest fires. This 

 danger, therefore, should no more prevent tree-planting than 

 house-building. But such views need to be spread among all 

 classes of the American people as will produce the general 

 conviction that the interests of all classes are concerned in 

 the protection and conservation of forests. The schools of 

 forestry have made this sentiment wellnigh universal in 



