Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 165, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1920 — TOWNS' NEED OF WOODLOT [ARTICLE]

TOWNS' NEED OF WOODLOT

Would Be Paying Proposition in These Days of Railroad Strikes and Coal Shortages. Is there a little woodlot In your town? Zurich, Switzerland, has had one working for it for six centuries and it is still paying big dividends. There Is a great big lesson in this, the American Forestry association of Washington says, in these days of railroad strikes and coal shortages. Many travelers are familiar with the “town forests” of Europe. One of the best known of these is the communal forest belonging to the city of Zurich, in Switzerland, which has an area of 2,840 acres, yielding on the average an annual income of nearly $20,000, or about $7.00 per acre; and this is the most remarkable because most of this income Is derived from the sale of firewood, which is perhaps, the cheapest product of a forest. This tract of forest land has been under management since the year 1309, and it has been steadily increasing in value during these six centuries, writes Prof. John Bentley, Jr., of Cornell, .in the American Forestry Magazine. In this country the number of towns and cities that are practicing forestry is still small, and their efforts have been confined chiefly to the protection of watersheds from which the city’s water supply is drawn.