PRACTICAL FORESTRY EXPLAINED 



533 



forest that is crowded when young, a natural thinning occurs as it de- 

 velops. The weaker trees die out. An average acre of mixed woods in 

 the Black Forest of Germany, which at the age of twenty years con- 

 tained 3,960 trees, contained at the age of forty years 1,013 trees and 

 at the age of eighty years, 346 trees. 



A person intending to start a forest should plant the trees in the 

 spring as soon as the frost is out of the ground. The most economical 

 plan probably will be to buy them of a reliable nurseryman. The for- 

 estry departments of some states now furnish seedlings at cost. In 

 1910 the Superintendent of Forests of the state of New York supplied 

 to private parties at cost 2,733,200 trees, being mostly white pine seed- 

 lings two years old. The pine produces a crop of cones every two or 

 three years, and if conditions are very favorable, one might gather the 

 cones, which should be done about the first part of September. By dry- 

 ing them in the sun, the seeds can be shaken out. The seeds should be 

 kept in a cool safe place, and can be sown in the spring in a garden bed 

 in the same way that garden seeds are sown, and the first summer must 

 be protected from the sun by lath screens about two feet above the beds, 

 or by an arbor of boughs ten feet high. In muggy weather, the deli- 

 cate pine plant is liable to a blight called " damping off " and as a pre- 

 ventative should obtain good air currents. When ready for planting 

 they should be carefully taken up with a spade, not pulled up. The 

 roots must not be exposed to the sun at all. The plants must be car- 



NOX-AGRICULTURAL LAND, FROM WHICH WHITE-PIXE FOREST HAS BEEX REMOVED. 



