southward eight hundred miles, much of the land once devoted to agriculture has deteriorated in fertility and productiveness and is now lying practically idle. At the same time the extension of coal mining is creating a growing demand for mine props and other timbers and the supply is becoming scarcer and scarcer.

and a final crop will be secured in from forty to sixty years after planting, for lumber and heavy mine timbers. The lands selected are those not capable of yielding any other valuable returns. Here is an example which should be followed in hundreds of other cases.

The state and the nation, however, can

Adjacent timber will be totally exhausted long before the supply of coal from even the more important veins is gone. For all timber planted now on these vacant agricultural lands there will be an eager market at maturity for mine timber, railroad ties and lumber. That this situation is recognized is seen by the fact that several of the coal companies themselves have begun forest planting. Over the very mines from which they are digging the coal they propose to grow the timber to prop the shafts. The H. C. Frick Coke Company, owning many farms in the Connellsville basin, recently set aside some 450 acres for forest planting under the direction of the Forest Service of the government. They are planting oaks, chestnut, maple, larch, tulip poplar and western catalpa. The cost is approximately $10 per acre and returns are expected from the quicker growing species in fifteen years. Thinnings will be made from the slower growing kinds in twenty and twenty-five years

look farther ahead than the individual or even the corporation and it is with the idea of creating future lumber forests that the Forest Service and, in many cases, the forestry bureaus of the states are preparing for the planting of great areas. But aside from this the national Forest Service is actively cooperating with and offering practical assistance to private tree planters and is fostering an educational campaign to induce planting of tracts all the way from the farm wood-lot of a few acres in extent ar clumps of trees here and there on the farm to serve as wind-breaks, to commercial forest plantations of large area. The method of the service in this co-operative work is to secure the establishment in various locations of samples of forest plantations of the highest possible usefulness and value to the owners and thus afford object lessons of careful methods of forest planting. The service has already made investigations of tree planting in the principal regions of artificial forest extension and has drawn plans and supervised private plantings in some forty states and territories, embracing 80,000 acres, in tracts varying in size from small plots to-in one case-a plantation of 3,000 acres. The plans contain comprehensive instructions for the necessary planting, selection of proper species for each particular tract, and the preparation of the ground and setting and spacing of the trees. Unlike orchard planting, forest trees are set very close to insure straight stems and to prevent branching -from four to eight feet apart each,

way.

This advice for forest planting can usually be secured free of cost, since the necessary detailed study in the principal regions of economic planting has already been made by the government, but the service does not furnish labor, seeds or nursery stock. The planter is expected in return to enter upon the work vigorously and to furnish such progress reports as the service may request of him.

In many farming sections, notably the wind-swept prairies of the the western states, wind-breaks are of great valuepractical necessities. Millions of trees have been planted in Kansas and Nebraska for this purpose and have now attained large growths-twice the girth of a man's body. Though planted in small strips and plots the aggregate acreage is considerable. The trees afford protection not only against cold winter winds, and are especially valuable for orchard protection, but also protect crops from the hot, parching winds of summer. Such winds, especially in the west, occasionally do great damage to agriculture, drying up the soil and blighting growing

things. They sometimes sweep across the unbroken prairie in a steady blow for several days. Tree wind-breaks afford effective relief and the Forest Service is glad to co-operate with any farmer who desires to establish one. In such planting, not only the question of wind is to be considered, but the plan should include a future supply of wood for the. farm,-fence posts, poles, etc. Extensive planting is also practiced along irrigation ditches and canals, where the service of the trees may be three-fold. They afford shade, thus preventing an excess of evaporation, furnish wind-breaks, and may also prevent the shifting of sand. The Forest Service is lending its aid to the Reclamation Service in connection with such planting on the great irrigation works which the government is constructing.

When Horace Greeley founded the town and community of Greeley, Colorado, the section was one of the waste places of the country, with not a tree in existence. Today a general view of the valley shows as many trees as are to be found in any average rural community—