124 Rhodora [JuLy 
I began in the spring of 1852 to plant a variety of trees for orna- 
ment, but as may be supposed, at fifty cents each from nurserymen, 
a very extensive planting would have been quite costly. I therefore, 
at the suggestion of my brother, Richard S. Fay, of Lynn, imported 
from England about 20,000 seedlings, comprising Scotch larches, 
and birches, Austrian and Scotch pines, English oaks and syca- 
mores, and Norway spruces. They came through the voyage well, 
and I placed them in a nursery, where they throve. About the same 
time, I began to transplant the native white and pitch pines from the 
old fields in the eastern part of the town (Falmouth) and to cover 
with them the bare gravelly hills in the rear of my house and fronting 
the water. After the imported trees had been cultivated in the nur- 
sery two years, I transplanted them and mixed them with the native 
pines, and also placed them in the vacant spots and openings, and 
on the outskirts of a twenty-five acre wood lot back of my house. 
They all did well. Beyond this wood lot, I had nearly 200 acres of 
old pasture and arable land (not much of the latter) stretching away 
northward to Buzzards Bay, on which there was not a tree large 
enough to give shade to a rabbit. Upon the sixty acres nearest 
home which I reserved for pasture, I planted half acre clumps of 
the imported trees, surrounding them with cheap fences of wire, 
drawn through posts, to keep off the cattle, until they should grow 
large enough for shade. Most of these trees are now of good size, 
and are doing well. About my house, where formerly there was not 
a tree, and where my neighbors said I could not make them grow, 
right in the face of the salt bearing southerly gales, the hills are 
covered with large pines, spruces, and other trees, and my buildings 
seem rather to have been planted in a grove, than that the grove 
should have been brought to them. And yet I have already cut 
away many trees, because they are too crowded. But after all this 
planting with the spade, I had upwards of a hundred acres of very 
poor pasture land, still bare of trees, and for which I had no use. 
It was overgrown in many places with patches of bushes, and much 
of the grass had given way to moss, It occurred to me that the 
easiest and cheapest way to utilize and improve this tract, would be 
to plant it with the seeds of trees and leave it to take care of itself. 
As there were no evergreens in the neighborhood, except those which 
I had set out near home, and as the Scotch and Austrian pines and 
Norway spruce seemed to stand the sea air well, I concluded to sow 
