Progress In Redwood Reforestation Program

. At Fort Bragg, Mendocino county, on the grounds of the Union Lumber Company, there is a four acre nursery plot that is destined to meen more to future generations of California than almost any other four acres in the State, unless it be a similar plot at Scotia, Humboldt county, ,owned by the Pacific Lumber Company. For at these two ;places the California Redwood Association is experimenting with more than a million and a half redwood seedlings rvith which they have inaugurated a tremendous reforestation program.

Nature herself has made valiant efforts in this same di. .rection, and many of the redwood tracts in Mendobino and Humboldt counties which were first cut are almost completely covered lvith a lusty second growth of trees. One 'grove owned by the Albion Lumber Company and cut within the memory of some of the men still working in the company's sawmill, is so completely reforested that the novice could easily be tricked into believing it vjrgin timber of smaller growth. But nature must have,;the most favorable conditions for staging a forest cotieback, and the assistance of man insures.speedy growth and stlperior timber qualifications.

From observation, and experiments with second growth redwoods, it takes sixty-five years for a maturity sufficient for profitable lumbering. With this thought in mind, the movement to assist nqture in clothing the hills again takes on a poetic significance. Scarcely any of the people concerned with the planting, rvhich has been uhder way since December 4th, will live to see its fruits, much less share in them. They are like sorvers of seed, knowing that they will never share in the harvest, yet content to live in the vision of plenty they ryill leave for others. And this vision extends from the man rvho gathers the redwood cones in the forest up to the very highest officials who are planning and directing the rvork.

This year rvill see nearly 1,000 acres replanted;next year '3,m0, attd so on until 1936 rvhen the scheme will have been perfected, whereby the replanting will not ohly keep pace 'with the amount of timber annually cut down, but will provide an excess to ultimately cover the acreage cut over in former years. In short, the California Redwood Associa-