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GENERAL REPORT OF THE JUDGES OF GROUP VI. 17 IV.—Forestry; Illustrations of the Art of Planting, Man aging, and Protecting Forests ; Statistics. Class 606. For our present purpose this class can be considered in three sections, viz.: a. The planting, care, and administration of forests in general. b. The planting and care of trees and shrubs producing com mercial products, excluding such cultivated kinds as orchard fruits, almonds, coffee, etc., which are economically imported only as culti vated plants. c. The literature of the subject, including maps and statistics. a. Trees are of such slow growth and long life, and large timber requires so many years to/nature, that their cultivation is not attractive to that large mass of the cultivators of the soil who must reap the rewards of their labors year by year, or who, if their necessities are not so pressing, are still impatient for quick profits. Some of the larger timbers on exhibition were of over six hundred years’ growth, and a stick of box-wood was shown which was claimed to be over nine hundred years’ growth. Hence we see why it is that forestry proper is only practiced on a large scale where there is government aid or supervision, or where a considerable proportion of the land is held in large estates remaining in the possession of the same family from generation to generation. The abundance and variety of native timber originally found and still existing over much of the United States, combined with the character of our landed proprietorship, have tended to make the people careless as to future timber-supplies, and forestry as a science can hardly be said to exist in this country. The nearest approach to it is found in the endeavors to grow trees in portions of the West where the natural supply of wood is scanty. In a private exhibit from California there was a long section of a trunk of the Australian blue-gum (Eucalyptus globulus) “ eleven years old” and “sixty feet high.” The section was eighteen inches in di ameter, exclusive of bark, at the base, and thirteen inches at five feet above. This species is now extensively planted in the State. From Iowa were specimens in boards of the wood of cultivated native and exotic forest-trees, some of them showing very rapid growth, as “ silver-leaf maple, nine years old,” seven inches in diame ter exclusive of the bark ; “ash-leaved maple, eight years old,” eight inches in diameter; “chestnut, fifteen years old,” nine inches; “per simmon, twenty-seven years old,” nineteen inches, etc.; a consider able number of species having been thus shown. 2