s system is known as forestry. It
has been worked out by some of the more advanced nations of Europe who
saw that destruction was coming on them through the cutting away of
their forests. Now forestry is practised by every nation except Turkey
and China. The principles have been well proved and the results of
scientific care of the forests are known to be even more sure than in
farming or live-stock raising.

The Department of Agriculture will send complete directions for planting
trees in rows at proper distances, will tell what kinds are best suited
to each region and condition, how to make them grow rapidly, and when to
cut. All these things should be thoroughly understood by every land
owner, large or small, but at present forestry is practised on only one
per cent. of all land in this country, owned by private persons or
companies, though it is practised on seventy per cent. of all public
lands.

The countries that show the best results in forestry are some of the
German states, particularly Prussia and Saxony, and France. In Prussia
the rate of production is three times as great as it was seventy-five
years ago. There is three times as much saw timber in a tree as there
was at that time, and the money returns from an average acre of forest
are now nearly ten times what they were sixty years ago. In Saxony the
state forests are receiving two dollars and thirty cents per acre a year
above all expenses from forests on land not fitted for agriculture, and
the profit is increasing every year.

France and Germany together spend $11,000,000 a year on their public
forests and receive from them an income of $30,000,000, or nearly three
times as much, while the United States spends for its public forests
more than ten times as much as it receives.

Many of our states are taking an active interest in forestry and are
buying tracts of land of low value for state forests. New York is taking
the lead in the work of planting forests, but even here the amount done
is much less than it should be. The state forester says that one million
trees are planted each year while twenty millions should be planted.

The National Conservation Commission reported that the entire United
States should plant an area larger than the states of Pennsylvania,
Ohio, and West Virginia, in order to supply our future needs, but that
we have actually planted an area less than the state of Rhode Island.

This, then, is the lesson we should learn in r