16 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



not be as profitable as the Scotch plantations. We have already suffi- 

 cient demonstration of this from actual experiment. We have some 

 plantations of trees, both in the East and in the West, which are of 

 sufficient age to furnish reliable data upon this subject. Mr. Budd, a 

 tree-grower of Iowa, and a careful observer, says : "A grove of ten 

 acres, thinned to six feet apart, containing twelve thousand trees, at, 

 twelve years were eight inches in diameter and thirty-four feet high, 

 the previous thinning paying all expenses of planting and cultivation. 

 Ten feet of the bodies of these trees were worth, for making bent- 

 stuff, etc., forty cents each, and the remaining top ten cents, making a 

 total of $6,000 as the profit of ten acres in twelve years, or a yearly 

 profit of $50 per acre. 1 ' Similar reports come from other places in the 

 West. 



But, turning from the rich lands of the West to the poor soils and 

 rough exposures of the East, we have sufficient examples of the profit- 

 ableness of tree-planting. One of the oldest in date, perhaps the 

 oldest example of forest-planting in this country, is that of Mr. Zacha- 

 riah Allen, at Smithfield, Rhode Island. In 1820 a tract of land 

 forty acres in extent was bequeathed to him. Professor Sargent, 

 from whom we take the account, says : " It had been constantly used 

 as a pasture for nearly a hundred years previous to its coming into 

 Mr. Allen's hands, and was at that time entirely worn out. The situ- 

 ation was an elevated one, and completely exposed to the wind, the 

 forty acres occupying the summit of a high hill of granite formation. 

 The surface was marked with ledges, cropping out in projecting cliffs,, 

 with intervals of loamy soil, covered with a scanty herbage, and sup- 

 plying nourishment to a few straggling white birches and the other 

 hardy plants which still too clearly mark our barren pastures. It was 

 found impossible to lease the land for pasturage, so exhausted had it 

 become. The owner consequently determined to try the experiment 

 of planting the whole, or that portion where the rock did not come to 

 the surface, with the seeds of forest-trees. The planting was done in 

 1820, and cost $45. Since then, for fifty-seven years, Mr. Allen has 

 kept a minute account of his expenditures and receipts in connection 

 with that field. He sets down the price of the land at fifteen dollars 

 an acre, that being what it was appraised at in the division of the es- 

 tate of the previous owner, though the taxes were for years less than 

 two dollars and a half yearly for the whole forty acres. Charging him- 

 self with the land and with interest on its valuation, and also on the 

 taxes paid" for fifty-seven years, his debit account stood, at the close 

 of 1877, $3,804.83. His credit account at the same time, for wood, 

 posts, timber, etc., and 320 cords still uncut, stood $6,348.06, leaving 

 a profit of $2,543.23, or 6 T 9 ^- per cent on the investment for the whole 

 term, and the land greatly improved besides." 



The experiments of Messrs. Fay and others at Lynn, and on the 

 barren sands of Cape Cod, where thousands of acres, valued at only 



