METHODS AND PROFIT OF TREE-PLANTING. 7 



of the ultimate and full-grown forest, the final outcome of their one 

 hundred and twenty or one hundred and sixty years of watching and 

 culture. If, for instance, they propose to raise what shall be at last a 

 forest of oak-timber, they will plant with the oaks successive rows of 

 the pine, .the beech, the maple, the larch, or the birch, each at a dis- 

 tance perhaps of twenty feet from its own kind, but each only four 

 feet from some neighbor. After a few years the quickest-growing 

 trees will be removed those nearest the oaks and this will go on 

 from time to time till, finally, the oaks are left to develop themselves 

 to their fullest stature and their greatest strength. As a rule, the thin- 

 ning is made at such intervals that half the trees originally planted 

 will be removed by the time they are twenty feet high. The number 

 on an acre should not exceed eight hundred when they have reached 

 the height of thirty feet, and when forty feet high only three hundred 

 or three hundred and fifty should remain. These successive thinnings, 

 it is estimated, will more than pay for the care and labor, as well as 

 interest on the land, leaving the final forest as clear profit. And it is 

 to be considered that very much more valuable timber is produced on 

 an acre of ground with this careful and systematic treatment than 

 when a forest is left to grow up by chance and in neglect, as is so 

 commonly the case. There is as great difference in the returns, pro- 

 portionally, as there is between the yield of a vegetable-garden care- 

 fully tended and that of one left without proper cultivation and allowed 

 to be overgrown with weeds. Dr. Berenger, head of the School of 

 Forestry at Vallambrosa, Italy, says that "while an uncultivated 

 woodland, taken for a long period, and counting interest and taxes, 

 would yield almost nothing to the capital invested, it is well established 

 that the same land, managed according to modern science, would, in 

 the long run, yield a revenue both conspicuous and constant." 



In many parts of our country, on the plains and prairies especially, 

 and wherever tree-planting is undertaken, except for utilizing waste 

 or rough and comparatively inaccessible ground, which would not be 

 profitable for ordinary tillage, the most desirable mode of planting 

 will be in belts or borders rather than in blocks. These belts should 

 be so disposed as to serve as screens from the strongest and most hurt- 

 ful winds. There can thus be secured an equally abundant growth of 

 timber, while the screen it furnishes will greatly increase the product 

 of other crops, and serve to promote the comfort of all, whether man 

 or beast, who can have its shelter. The variety of products on a farm 

 may be thus greatly increased also. Tender vegetables and fruit-trees 

 readily flourish under the protection of such shelter belts of forest- 

 trees which could not otherwise be cultivated with success, if at all. 

 And the protection of such belts extends farther than many suppose. 

 It is estimated that their beneficial influence reaches, in horizontal 

 distance, about sixteen times their height. It is probable, therefore, 

 that belts of trees might be so disposed, on almost any farm, that the 



