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BIENNIAL REPORT
                STATE FOREST NURSERIES.
                        By C. L. HARRINGTON.
   The state forest nurseries were established for two reasons:
   1. To furnish plant material for the restocking of lands unsuited for
 agriculture, and park properties owned by the state.
   2. To furnish planting stock, at the cost of production, to private land
 owners who desired to reforest their holdings.
   The second reason was adopted primarily to encourage forest tree cul-
 ture in the state. With the gradual depletion of the original forests in
 Wisconsin, leaving millions of acres of cut-over land, the poorest of which
 will not be settled for a century or more; with the problem of encouraging
 tree planting on the hundreds of thousands of acres of rough, very stony,
 or non-agricultural lands on Wisconsin farms, and with the need for the
 planting of windbreaks or shelter belts in the prairie regions of the state,
 arose the question of providing a source of planting material, which would
 be cheap, acclimated and free from destructive diseases or pests, which
 might jeopardize the growth of other trees in the state. The same ques-
 tions had already risen in states along the Atlantic and had been solved
 by the establishment of forest nurseries in over twenty of the northern
 states. These nurseries have grown to enormous extent, those of New
 York alone furnishing from three to five million trees for planting to pri-
 vate land owners annually. In establishing nurseries, Wisconsin was
 guided by the experience of the older eastern states.
 The need for state-grown planting material is especially emphasized
 at the present time. An outbreak of the white pine blister rust was dis-
 covered early this summer in Polk county in a plantation started from stock
 which had been imported from Germany. This disease is especially de-
 structive to white pine, young or old, for no infected trees have ever been
 known to recover from its ravages. As a result of this discovery, the State
 Department of Entomology and Nursery Inspection placed a quarantine
 on the importation of all five needle pines into this state.
 The sentiment regarding forest tree planting in the state is yearly
 becoming more favorable. As the need of tree culture in the economic
 development of the state is more clearly realized by the average citizen,
 the work of the reproduction of timber stands on lands primarily suited
for this purpose will increase.
  At the present time two forest tree nurseries are maintained by the
State Conservation Commission, one located at Trout lake, which embraces
about seven acres, and the other at Tomahawk lake, includes about four
acres. The Trout lake nursery is primarily suited for the development of
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