216 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Scotland, lias been found to be from one to one and a half inches 

 ill circumference, at six feet from the ground, on trunks from 

 , ten to fifty years of age. It has, moreover, the property of 

 flourishing on surfaces almost entirely without soil, thickly 

 strown with fragments of rocks, on the high and bleak sides and 

 tops of hills, where vegetation scarcely exists. The most desira- 

 ble situation is where the roots will neither be drowned by 

 stagnant water in winter, nor parched by drought in summer.* 



The value of oak timber is already great, and is constantly 

 and surely increasing, from the diminution of the home supply, 

 and the increased difiiculty of getting it from abroad. All kinds 

 of oak are of so slow growth, and the number of years necessary 

 to create a forest so very great, and dependence on a foreign sup- 

 ply so unsafe, that it is important that means should be imme- 

 diately taken to convert into future forests some of the many 

 thousands of acres susceptible of this, which are now lying 

 waste. In consequence of the great cost of labor in this country, 

 it is desirable to sow the acorns where the trees are to stand, if 

 any way could be contrived to defend them from the mice and 

 squirrels ; and this may probably be done by sowing a sufficient 

 quantity to allow for the destruction caused by these animals. 



As to the management of the acorn, the following extract 

 from Loudon will give the most approved mode : — " The acorns 

 need not not be gathered from the tree, but may be collected from 

 the ground immediately after they have dropped; and, as in the 

 case of other tree seeds, they may either be sown then or kept 

 till spring. If they are to be kept, they should be made per- 

 fectly dry in the sun, or in an airy shed, mixed with dry sand, 

 in the proportion of three bushels of sand to one bushel of 

 acorns, or with dry moss, and then excluded from the air and 

 vermin." The French nurserymen make the acorn, or other 

 seed, germinate in moist earth, or saw du.st, and, before planting 

 it, pinch off the end of the root. This causes the plant immedi- 

 ately to throw out side fibres. For the same imrpose it is the 

 practice, in England, either to transplant the oak after one or 

 two years' growth, removing at the time a part of the tap root, 

 or to cut it ofl', without removing, by inserting a spade, obliquely, 



*A very valuable account of every thing relating to the whole cultivation, 

 management and uses of the larch, is found in Loudon's Arboretum, pp. 2353- 

 2399 ; also, pp. 104-5, Agriculture of Massachusetts, for 1854. — Ed. 



