102 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



the Commonwealth. Let the officers of every society be stimu- 

 lated to renewed effort to raise the character of the experiments 

 conducted under their influence, to a higher standard, and 

 encourage more complete and reliable records of such experi- 

 ments, and they will do infinite service in promoting agricul- 

 tural improvement among us, and answering the innumerable 

 questions and difficulties which meet us at every turn of our 

 daily practice in farming, and by enabling us to supply our 

 wants and to increase and develop the capacities of our farms 

 in the most perfect and economical manner. 



You, gentlemen of the Nantucket Agricidtural Society, have 

 a work to perform in developing the resources of your beautiful 

 island. It is within your power, by proper effort, to bring many 

 of your soils, now comparatively barren, to a high state of fer- 

 tility. I have been, at different times within the past three 

 years, over nearly the whole island, have visited many of your 

 best farms, your plantations of forest trees and cranberries, and 

 have been not only gratified and surprised at what has already 

 been attempted and accomplished, but convinced that much 

 more may be judiciously undertaken with far greater and more 

 surprising results. 



He who shall succeed in cultivating forest trees will be a public 

 benefactor in more senses than one. Forest trees in exposed 

 situations like hundreds of acres along your shores, not only 

 afford shelter to other plants, making their cultivation practi- 

 cable which would have been undertaken in vain without such 

 a protection, but actually increase the fertility of lands in their 

 vicinity. The complete success which has attended the culture 

 of pines in situations somewhat like yours in England, in Scot- 

 land, and particularly in France, to say nothing of the success- 

 ful experiments in this country, justify the prediction that such 

 plantations will not only enhance the value of property around 

 them, but pay a good profit on the outlay. 



Time would fail me to enter into the details of the best modes 

 of planting forest trees, even if it were in my power to make 

 any suggestions of value to those among you who already have 

 some experience, but I may briefly state that in all plantations 

 of forests a mixture of species is to be preferred to any one 

 variety. You have now chiefly the maritime pine, (pinns mari- 

 tima,) which seems to be growing luxuriantly. Now if you 



