52 
FORESTS OF WISCONSIN. 
beginning can be made by planting a much smaller number (say> 
500 per acre) than is really needed to make a satisfactory stand. 
These plants, together with the poplar, birch, and other brush, 
would soon make a cover for the ground, the young pine would 
rapidly be growing into marketable wood and at the age of 
twenty years and less would begin to shed abundance of seed so 
that before the first trees are ready to cut every foot of ground 
would be covered by a promising pine thicket. 
Fire may have to be resorted to as a cheap and rapid means 
of clearing the ground where it is covered with large quantities 
of dead and fallen timber, and especially where dense thickets 
of fire-killed brushwood offer serious obstacles to any sylvicul¬ 
tural processes. The outlay for all work of this kind need be 
made but once; the forest once established will be permanent 
and by judicious logging and adequate protection against fire 
will renew itself indefinitely. 
Of equal and perhaps greater importance than the choice of 
proper methods will be the selection of the proper kinds to plant. 
Among the native growth the pines are preferable to the hard¬ 
woods, and the white pine is foremost here as in every other re¬ 
spect. Nevertheless, red (Norway) pine and even jack pine will 
prove of great value and may often have to be resorted to. The 
value of these pines lies in part in their frugality, since they are 
perfectly satisfied with poor soils, really unfit for farming. 
They are still more valuable in their gregarious habit, thriving 
in great numbers together and thus facilitating exploitation, and 
in their capacity of developing a large number of trees on a 
small area. These powers, together with the great length of 
their trunk, causes them to produce large yields, and, finally, 
the character of their wood ensures for their product an almost 
unlimited market at all times. 
The white pine will thrive on 90 per cent, of all sandy areas 
of Wisconsin and on all loam and clay lands, grows fast and in 
very dense stands, is useful for pulp at 30 years, for box boards 
at 50 and makes lumber at 80 to 100 years. According to the 
experience in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, groves 60 
