The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1908-09-10
NetO Crops on
Cut-OUer Pine Lands.

ating in Louisiana and Mississippi
have begun to give thought to the fu-
ture of the cut-over lands. The Long
Bell Lumber Company is planting fig
and pecan orchards on such lands at
De Ridder, La. Other beginnings have
been made in both states.
A company that buys only the TIM
Der rights on pine lands has no finan-
cial interest in the lands after the
timber is removed. But most of the
companies buy the land with the tim.
ber When they have removed the
timber the land remains, virtually
without value. 1t has been thus in
Michigan, in Wisconsin and in Mime
sofa, among the Northern States that
once had great pine forests. and it is
thus today in most of the pine regions
of the South.
The new plan contemplates the max.
ing upon the cut over lands of a Sec
ond crop that shall be even more val
liable than the first one. 1t forecasts
a great growth in the fig industry.
There is every probability that tens of
thousands of acres of cut-over pine
lands in the coast country on both
sides of the Mississippi River will
within the next ten years be replanted
to fig orchards. The South's favorite
native fruit promises to become as
well known and widely favored
throughout the nation, in it's preserved
form, as it has long been in the coast
country.
The pecan, too, fourishes on old
pine lands not too far north. 1t is, in
the hands of experts, a very profitable
crop. grown at little cost. once it is
well started, and remarkably free from
commercial hazards. There is no dam
ger that the supply will overrun the
demand. Even the poorer grades of
wild pecans bring good prices in the
markets. The traveller in South Mis-
sissippi frequently comes on native
wild pecan trees, bearing the small,
hard-shelled nuts, that produce an
average annual revenue of S25 or
more. 1t takes twenty years to make
a wild tree big enough to do that. The
cultivated varieties can be brought
into profitable bearing in six or seven
years. One variety, it is reported,
bears at four years. Forty ten-year-old
trees on an acre, of selected varieties,
will produce more revenue than anv
common farm crop-more than an acre
of average pine. And you have to de-
stroy the pine trees to get their CROP,
whereas the pecan crop increases as
the trees grow older, and they outlive
the oldest man.
Some of the New England stat es
have begun to reforest waste land.
The states of Connecticut and Massa-
chusetts are buying small tracts at low
prices and are planting white. pine
seedlings. State foresters prot ect
these young forests from fire and from
stock. Vermont is selling white pine
seedlings, grown at her agricultural
college, at cost to farmers who wish
TO reforest rocky pastures or cut-over
lands Private investors in the New
England states have in many in.
stances bought up large tracts of these
useless lands and have planted peach
and apple orchards, from which they
derive each year more revenue than
was got by cutting off the pine in the
first instance.
The passing of the great forests may
not be an unmixed evil. The period OF
transition. like all such periods. raises
many difficult problems as of food
ed river valleys, loss of water power
for mills and factories, the rising ant
almost prohibitive price of news print
paper now made exclusively from
spruce pulp, etc. All of these prob
lens will be solved. The prophets O
ultimate disaster will be disappointed