A few years ago the Illinois Central made a plantation of catalpa and black locust in Illinois and during the current year the Louisville & Nashville Railroad have arranged for a similar plantation in Alabama.
It has not been necessary for the farmers of the South to resort to plantations for their supplies of posts and fuel, and if we are not improvident of our supplies it will hardly become necessary, as we have left on nearly every farm enough timber of suitable varieties from which we can procure our future supplies by self-sown seed, provided the sections to be reserved for timber growth are protected from stock and fires. In some instances, however, it may prove cheaper and more expedient to plant as was the case with the now famous yaggy catalpa plantation near Hutchinson, Kan., in which a ten-year-old block showed a net value of $197, or a yearly net income of $19.75 per acre.
And a twenty-five-year-old plantation of red juniper, belonging to F. C. F. Schutz, Menlo, Iowa, showed a net value of $200.54 per acre, or a yearly net income of about $8—not a bad showing for forestry, when we bear in mind that the net income from other farm crops seldom exceeds that amount, but from the farm crops the returns are secured annually, while in the case of a forestry investment there is quite a period preceding the first harvest, during which we have to figure in an accumulative value.
All wood-lot planting should be governed by the local demand, for that reason it would be hard to suggest either methods or species for the South as a whole, but generally speaking, black locust (robinia pseudoacacia), hardy catalpa, mulberry and chestnut would be the most desirable, as the first three would be quickly available for fence posts, and the chestnut would always be in demand for telephone and telegraph poles as well as furnishing construction timber.
Wood-lot forestry has the advantage over similar work conducted on a large scale, as the farmer is at no expense for protection or supervision, the location of forest on the farm assures its safety from fire or trespass, and he gives it his personal attention.
However, to secure the most desirable management his supervision should be carried on under the direction of trained foresters.
To secure this without appreciable additional cost it is to his interest to ally himself with those who are striving for a State forestry system, under which a forester would be employed whose duty would be to look after the State reserves and give advice to farmers and timber land owners on the management of all forest tracts set aside for permanent forest investments.
The indirect utility of the forests is well known and appreciated by those who have given the matter any thought, but the average American farmer has little use for a thing which does not appeal to him in dollars and cents, however, the Bureau of Forestry realizing the great importance of this matter to the agricultural interests, sent Mr. J. W. Twomey to the San Bernardino Mountains of California to conduct investigations of the “Relation of Forests to Stream Flow,” and in the “Year-Book” of the Department of Agriculture for 1904 he reports these conclusions:
“In humid regions, where the precipitation is fairly evenly distributed over the year, and where the catchment area is sufficiently large to permit the greater part of the seepage to enter the stream above the point where it is gauged, the evidence accumulated to date indicates that stream flow is materially increased by the presence of forests.
“In regions characterized by the short wet season and a long dry one, as in Southern California and many other portions of the West, present evidence indicates, at least on small mountainous catchment areas, that the forest very materially decreases the total amount of run-off.