The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1900-05-02
Encourage Tree Planting.

Indiana's Legislature encourages tree
planting by enacting law appraising
at only one dollar an acre lands devot-
ed to growing wood or timber.
Here is a suggestion for Vermont
lawmakers. Vermont's area is about
five and one-fourth million acres.
Probably there is not far from a p1il-
lion acres of worn out pastures and
waste lands. These can never be cul-
tivated. Their condition forbids any
sort of tillage. The only means of res
toration to value is through reforest-
ing. A million acres, more or less, of
practically valueless real estatel
In Massachusetts, in the west, in the
countries of Europe, millions of acres
Of similar lands have been put in the
way of an increasing valuation, from
decade to decade, by planting them
with trees valuable for wood or timber
or other products. Forest husbandry
brings slow returns. 1t is a heroic
crop and time is needed to mature it.
The Vermont farmer has little use for
any crop he cannot harvest yearly, or
for the ripening of which he must wait
a generation or life time. Towns
are permitted to encourage by tax ex-
emption the planting of manufactu ring
industries within their limits. Why
should not the natural desire of the
landowner during his lifetime to reap
some advantage from his labors and
expenditures be encouraged by tax ex-
emption, or by bounties, or in some
rational way, to plant his barren or I'M
productive acres, his sandy plains, or
rocky hills and ridges, or exhausted
swales, with useful trees, and to nurse
them till they become self-sustaining?
The Legislature at its next session
ought to instruct the listers to ascertain
the number of acres of such lands in
their respective towns, and to report
the same to the State government. 1t
ought to devise some system of en-
couragement for the owners of such
lands to return them to some condi-
ton of productiveness or value, and
this encouragement ought to take the
form that appeals most powerfully to
the interest of the owners-money in
hand. Thus the farmer may be given
the same immediate object in planting
and nursing crop of trees that he has in
raising any other crop or in rearing cows
for his dairy, or horses for market.
Give the board of agriculture some
thing to do that will justify its exist
ence by placing this business in its
hands.
The work of retaining q million
acres Of land, one-ffth of the States
entire area, is an enterprise that ought
to enlist the best thought and the en-
| thusiasm of local statesmen, and would
be task to which the most capable
board of agriculture that can be consti-
tuted could better bend its energies
than some in which that body has been
engaged. In the way of positive and
practical benefits to the State at large
this work would be far and away in adj
vance OF much mooted good-roads
projects, or the fish and game schemes,
ON which the State is annually spend
ing large sums of money, important as
those enterprises may be conceded to be.
The reclamation of it's worn out pas.
lures and waste lands is to the State a
matter of fundamental importance. 1t
vitality affects its greatest industry, ag.
riculture, ana of necessity every other
interest.
A Keen Clear Brain.
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