[From John A. Warde, M. D., president American Forestry Association.] NORTH BEND, HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO, March 13, 1880. MY DEAR SIR: I rejoice for the cause of forestry in our country that we have such earnest advocates in its favor as those who have come to the front in your enterprising State. Still more do I find cause for rejoicing, that already you have reached that important stage in your progress which indicates your appreciation of the pressing need for information as to all the practical details of this new branch of the agriculture of our land. Some of your citizens were among the foremost to aid the Forestry Association in its memorial to the Forty-fifth Congress, praying for a measure that, it was hoped, would, in some degree, supply the desired information to our coming foresters, in a judicious report, by a practical commission, that would be able to select, from the long experience of Europe, such valuable facts in forest management as would be adapted to the conditions of our country. In a modest but earnest way the great necessity for such information was urged upon the honorable members, and an address was prepared by our association, which was presented to Congress and the country about two years ago, entitled "The Needs of Forestry." Your noble work of tree planting on the prairies, so well followed up with the most practical advice to the new planters, is now most admirably complemented by your recent efforts to establish or rather to have the general government provide for the establishment of, a much needed school of forestry. May your efforts be seconded and ably supported by the most enlightened agriculturists of our country, is the sincere desire of your friend, JNO. A. WARDER, President American Forestry Association. Hon. C. C. ANDREWS, [From Melville Egleston, esq., of New York.] NEW YORK, March 15, 1880. DEAR SIR: My attention has been attracted to the efforts of your Chamber of Commerce and of yourself, personally, to secure the establishment of a school of forestry, in which I wish you all success. My father, the Rev. N. H. Egleston, of Williamstown, Mass., has been interested for many years in the subject of forestry, upon which he has written repeatedly. An article of his will appear in Harper's Monthly (next month, I believe), and he has now another article nearly ready upon "Schools of Forestry." I am sure that he will be greatly interested in your efforts, and if you will cause to be sent to him the report of your committee, and any other documents bearing upon the subject, you will confer a great favor. Respectfully, yours, General H. H. SIBLEY, MELVILLE EGLESTON. President Chamber of Commerce, Saint Paul, Minn. [From J. W. Andrews, LL. D., president Marietta College, Ohio.] March 12, 1880. DEAR SIR: Your letter of the 9th instant, with its inclosure, has been received. I have read the report, memorial, and bill relating to a school of forestry, with much interest, but I fear that I cannot say anything that would forward the measure. There can be no doubt that the subject is one of great importance to the Northwest and to the whole country, and I am very glad that you are moving in the matter. No one who has seen the cultivated forests of Europe can view with indifference the waste so manifest in our own country. That young men should receive special training here as well as in the countries of Europe in matters pertaining to forestry cannot be questioned. But I am doubtful about a land-grant for this purpose. Still, land had much better be given for this purpose than to augment the endowment of our State agricultural colleges. But these institutions are besieging Congress for additional grants, and very likely they may succeed. I do not know whether the Agricultural College of Minnesota is connected with your State University; but, between these two, provision ought to be made for a department of forestry. Many of the branches required in a school of forestry are already taught in the University or the Agricultural College, and the additional work could be provided. Unless both these institutions are on higher ground than in most States, they could well give up a considerable portion of their work and devote their energies to this matter of forestry. I am, then, greatly interested in your general object, but I am not favorable to Congressional grants for educational purposes. If you get your sections, very well; but if not, divert some of your previous grants into this direction. Make a beginning in this way, and I am sure the State, or the nation, or generous men will carry the measure forward to complete success. Yours, truly, Hon. C. C. ANDREWS. J. W. ANDREWS, President. [From Charles W. Eliot, LL. D., president of Harvard University.] HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Cambridge, Mass., February 26, 1880. DEAR SIR: I find myself unable to support the memorial adopted by the Chamber of Commerce of Saint Paul on the subject of a national endowment for a free school of forestry at Saint Paul. I do not think that such a technical school should be free; and I do not see why the one interest of forestry should be selected for such support by national taxation rather than any other considerable industrial or commercial interest. If the national government is going to spend money at all for education (to give land is the same thing as voting money), I think it should be for elementary education. Regretting that I cannot comply with your request, I remain, dear sir, HENRY H. SIBLEY, Esq., Saint Paul, Minn. [From C. S. Sargent, director of the Arboretum of Harvard University.] BROOKLINE, MASS., March 8, 1880. MY DEAR SIR: I thank you for your letter and the school of forestry article from the Pioneer Press. You ask me to make any suggestions which may occur to me in reference to this matter. There are, I believe, two reasons why schools of forestry cannot succeed at the present time in the United States, and why, therefore, it is not wise to undertake to establish them. This entirely leaves aside the question of the propriety of asking the government to aid by subsidy any more State or private enterprises, a question about which I believe there is a very strong counter-feeling. My reasons for thinking that it is not now advisable to undertake the establishment of schools of forestry in the United States are that there are no teachers to teach and no scholars who want to be taught in such schools. There are no teachers, because no one can yet have possibly gained (certainly outside of the older States) sufficient knowledge of the real meaning and wants of American forestry in its relation to any given locality to be able to treat it scientifically. European experience and European methods cannot aid us in presence of the problems we have to solve; and European instructors would be worse than useless at the head of an institution founded for the purpose of teaching American forest methods. And yet you must get your instructors from Europe, for who is there in this country to place at the head of such an establishment as you propose? There can be no serious pupils yet in such a school, for there is not yet a demand in this country for regular professional foresters, the sort of men a forest school is intended to train, and whose life work is to be forest management. The time will come when there will be a demand for such men, when every great railroad in the United States will have a regular forester whose life work it will be to rear and manage railway forests, and whose corporate and private capital will be largely directed and employed in planting great tracts of forest on the plains and prairies. Then foresters will be needed and then they will be as well paid and as regularly employed as railway or mining engineers. Then, when young men see that there is an opening for them in this direction, there will be plenty of pupils, who will be glad to devote years to fitting themselves for the position of foresters. Now there is no inducement and there cannot be for years to come, or until the destruction of our forests reaches a point where higher prices for all forest products set people to seriously consider the importance of renewing them. A forest school to-day in this country must, like the agricultural colleges, go outside of its special sphere, or else as a school fail through want of pupils. What this country does want is not forest schools, but experimental stations for forestry, experimental arboretums (and why not in connection with agricultural colleges), in which the officers need not be hampered with unwilling students, but may be allowed to devote themselves to those experiments on which alone the future system of American forestry can be safely based, so that when the time comes and the demand is felt for a class of trained forest managers, the information will have been acquired which will make it possible to properly and safely instruct them. There is an immense amount to be done at such an establishment in testing species, in studying methods suited to the various climatic con ditions peculiar to every region, in creating public sentiment, in devising and recomemnding legislation, in stimulating experiments by others, and recording the result of such experiments for future use. You must remember that a really safe system of forestry, unlike that of any other branch of agriculture, can only be satisfactorily established after long years of carefully recorded experiments. This generation will have more than it can accomplish in experimenting and preparing, that the next may safely and scientifically teach. For you must remember, too, that it will not do to make a mistake in teaching how to plant and manage a crop which must take a lifetime to mature. If a man plants a crop of corn, and selects the wrong variety, the wrong soil or situation, or manure, the mistake is serious enough, but it is not fatal, and can be remedied the next year; but suppose he plants a crop of trees and does not find out for thirty years or more that he is all wrong and has selected a worthless species and a defective method; the mistake is not so easily remedied. Who is there to-day who can safely say what the right tree to plant on the prairies is? Who can know until the plantations made there have had at least a fifty years' trial, and a crop of timber has been harvested? Let there be as many experimental stations as can be established, put them in charge of the best men money can hire, let these officers not only make experimental plantations themselves, but let them use their influence to induce others to do the same (the more the better), note the results carefully and consciensciously; here will be the foundations on which will be slowly but safely and securely reared the true system of American forestry. If there ever was an occasion when it was wise to make haste slowly it is this. Experiment and suggest as much as you can, but don't teach what you can't possibly know; or, rather, don't try to teach, for fortunately perhaps, there is no one yet to teach these uncertainties to. With kind regards, yours faithfully, LEONARD B. HODGES, Esq., Saint Paul, Minn. C. S. SARGENT. [From Hon. O. P. Whitcomb, State auditor of Minnesota,] STATE OF MINNESOTA, AUDITOR'S OFFICE, SIR: I have been requested by the committee of the Saint Paul Chamber of Commerce on the subject of a school of foresty to communicate to you my opinion as to the amount of money that might be expected to be derived from the sale of 300 sections of public land in this State, in case such a quantity should be granted, in compliance with the memorial which was introduced by you in the Senate on the 3d instant. In view of the fact that all selections under this grant would have to be made in what is considered the uninhabitable portion of the State, I am of the opinion that $1.25 per acre would be a large estimate of the prospective average value of the grant. Yours, truly, O. P. WHITCOMB, Auditor of State and ex-officio Commissioner of State Land Office. Hon. S. J. R. MCMILLIN, United States Senator, Washington, D. C. S. Mis. 91-3 [From B. C. Baldwin, chief clerk surveyor-general's office, Saint Paul, Minn.] UNITED STATES SURVEYOR-GENERAL'S OFFICE, Saint Paul, Minn., March 29, 1880. DEAR SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication of the 23d instant, requesting me to state what I have seen of the destruction of timber in this State by fires. In reply I would say that so far as my observation has extended, having been engaged two years in making surveys in the timbered portions of this State, I am convinced that the destruction of valuable timber by fires has been very great indeed, and is a matter of serious importance to the whole country. In that portion of the State which I surveyed, I found frequently tracts of land varying from 100 to 1,000 acres, once covered with valuable pine timber, where the timber had been entirely destroyed. In one township which I particularly recollect, and which had once contained a great deal of valuable timber, the fires had destroyed everything of any value in nearly the entire township. In many places I observed that where the timber was still living it had been seriously damaged by the frequent fires that had passed over the country, nearly every tree being partially burned away at the root, thus impairing its vitality and also weakening the trees at the base and rendering them liable to be blown down by the first gale of wind which strikes them. It is difficult to form a correct estimate of the proportion of timber in the State thus destroyed, but it is very large indeed, in some instances extending over large regions of country, fully one-half of the timber being destroyed. I have conversed with surveyors whose observations have been more extended than mine, and their statements fully corrobrate all that I have stated above. Yours, very respectfully, B. C. BALDWIN, Chief Clerk, Surveyor-General's Office. Hon. C. C. ANDREWS, Saint Paul, Minn. |