Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 January 1908 — 4,000,000 Christmas Trees a Year. [ARTICLE]

4,000,000 Christmas Trees a Year.

In discussing the effect on the forests ol -the country by the use of-. Christmas trees, of which it is estimatejf that 4,090,* 000 are used each year, Gifford Pincbot,. United Stated-forester, says that the effect is infinitesimal compared with the destruction caused by forest fires and wasteful lumbering. If plant.ed four feet apart these trees would be grown on less than 1,400 acres; He sayiTthat trees suitable for Christmas'Trees do not grow in the old forests, where reproduction is most important, but in the open, and there is n j more - reason for an outcry against us : ug land to grow Christmas trees than to grow flowers. According to Mr. Pinchot, the cenler of the Christmas tree industry Hes in the big cities of the East. New York City and the New England States consume 1,500,000 trees, or nearly one-lialf of all the output. Maine, New Hampshire, the Berkshire Hills', in Mas-

•Sncliusetts, and the Adirondacks and Catskills, in New York, are the sources of supply for New York, Boston and Philadelphia and even tor Baltimore and Washington. The swamps of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota furnish the of Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Detroit, while the local demand throughout the 1 central West is mainly by- nursery-grown Norway spruce. i