48 BULLETIN" 14 9 7, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
protection must include other items, such as detection, and these may 
raise the costs sometimes to as much as 10 or 15 cents an acre. Actual 
costs on the Michigan and Minnesota national forests are 9 cents 
and 4 cents an acre, respectively. Ordinarily fire protection is the 
only maintenance cost except for the occasional expense of cleanings 
or cuttings in areas where there is considerable brush or natural tree 
growth competing with planted trees. 
TAXES 
The taxes on cut-over and denuded lands in the Lake States vary 
from 5 or 10 cents to 85 cents an acre. They are less on the sandy 
land of the southern peninsula of Michigan where the frequent fail- 
ure of attempts at farming over a period of years have generally 
proved the land's low value, and they are higher in the developing 
portions of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota where there is still 
some optimism in the matter of land settlement and development. 
An average figure for the tax on cut-over land in the northern Lake 
States is probably about 35 cents an acre annually. Although this 
rate is not always prohibitive to forest planting where other condi- 
tions are favorable, the difference between 35 cents and 10 cents for 
lr.rge areas in the Lake States may, under present economic condi- 
tions, mean the difference between a profit and a loss in the results 
of the planting operation. 
GROWTH OF PLANTATIONS 
Since the plantations in the northern Lake States have not yet 
reached an age or size to be cut and marketed, definite figures on 
growth and yield can not be obtained. It has been necessary to 
estimate their future yield by making comparisons of their growth 
during the first 10 to 25 years with natural growth, and with the 
growth of plantations of the same species and ages in other regions. 
GROWTH IN HEIGHT 
For the first 10 years jack pine grows the fastest in height, Norway 
pine next and a little faster than northern white, and white and 
Norway spruce somewhat slower than northern white pine. (PI. 5.) 
The comparisons between species are brought out in Figures 6 and 7 
and in Table 6. Jack pine reaches twice the height of Norway or the 
w T hite pine during the first 10 or 15 year period, when these species 
are characteristically slow of growth, but after that period it does 
not increase its lead at the same rate, if at all. Scotch pine (fig. 6) 
grows only a little less rapidly than jack pine and on the cultivated 
soils even faster. However, nearly all of the older plantations of 
Scotch pine in the region are so crooked and so limby that it is doubt- 
ful if they will ever be used for anything but firewood, and this is 
likely to be the outcome of planting Scotch pine in an}^ instance un- 
less extreme care is used in obtaining seed of northern origin. Fur- 
thermore, this species has no advantage over the native jack pine on 
extremely poor sands, and should be used only on reasonably good 
sites. 
^ The averages for the spruces and larch are based on so few planta- 
tions that they only serve to indicate comparatively slow height 
growth during early life. 
