46 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



the forest trees, but also to plant them. Our best timber is 

 becoming more and more costly ; our civil and naval architects 

 are obliged to make use of inferior quality ; the live-oak of the 

 South is becoming more scarce ; our, apparently inexhaustible 

 stores of vrhite pine and white oak are rapidly disappearing, 

 while there is no real effort to save them or supply their place. 

 You, each one, who owns a few acres, can do your share in 

 arresting this mighty evil, and by a simultaneous effort, at the 

 expense to each of only a few dollars and a few hours of inter- 

 esting labor, can confer a vast favor upon your children at a 

 cheap rate. The forests are to America one of the chief jewels 

 in her coronet — skirting our lakes, shading our rivers with 

 their exquisitely varied foliage ; covering our hill-sides, they not 

 only appeal to our sentiment of beauty and of the picturesque, 

 but protect the springs and sources of our invaluable rivers, 

 and save them — as they merrily dance over their rapids on their 

 way to the sea, founding cities on their devious course — from 

 the too fervid rays of the summer sun. We ought to remem- 

 ber that our rivers, unlike the Rhine, the Danube, or the 

 Rhone, which spring from the everlasting snows and giant 

 glaciers of the Alps, trace their sources back to the small 

 springs and petty rivulets which owe their very existence to 

 the protecting shade of the forests. 



I remember that riding one hot summer day in the south of 

 Spain, whose plains and hill-sides have been thoroughly denuded 

 of trees — except of the poor, homely and shadeless olive — my 

 intelligent guide pointed to a huge ring or bolt in the side of 

 a rock, as our horses were picking their way through the dry, 

 rocky course of a once deep river. " There," said he, " the 

 old Romans used to make fast their galleys when they ascended 

 this river." The forests have now gone, and with them this 

 once navigable river, which flows only in the winter, and then 

 is but a shallow stream. 



