192 MASSACHUSETTS AGEICULTUEE. 



ble, is disappearing with a rapidity and certainty which ought 

 to startle the community into the adoption of some persistent 

 and systematic action for securing a supply for the future, or 

 for the invention of a substitute. Making every suitable 

 allowance for erroneous computations, the products of these 

 forests must diminish sensibly during the next decade, and, 

 in all probability fail utterly during the succeeding one. 

 When this result is reached, whether sooner or later, and our 

 lumber-markets become dependent upon local supplies, white- 

 pine woodland will be more desirable property than the stocks 

 and bonds, now so popular as investments, and so universally 

 worshipped by the devotees of Mammon. 



Young white pines have been inconsiderately destroyed 

 on many an acre of land, which, had they been allowed to 

 remain, would now have been worth ten times its present 

 value and all the income derived from it since their destruc- 

 tion. It is not desirable, of course, to have our fields dis- 

 figured by occasional scraggy seedlings, injuring them for 

 pasturage, and not changing them to forests. But there are 

 portions of nearly every farm where a growth of forest-trees 

 would be more valuable than the scanty innutritions herbage 

 they reluctantly yield. To such places every seedling white- 

 pine which makes its appearance where it is not wanted, or 

 where it would be destroyed, should be carefully removed 

 and set at a suitable distance from others which may have 

 preceded it. This course pursued for a few years, would 

 secure, without appreciable cost, a very satisfactory addition 

 to the cash value of the land, and furnish its owner a most 

 worthy source of pride and pleasure. 



The greatest hindrance to the perfect growth of w^hite-pine 

 timber is the grub or borer, which is hatched from an egg de- 

 posited by the turpentine fly, and which seems to prefer the 

 partly-grown leading-shoot, in the central part of which it 

 burrows, leaving a thin shell on the outside through which 

 sutficient sap will ascend to maintain the semblance of life, 

 until the insect, having completed its existence as a grub, 

 makes its exit, seeking the ground as its abiding-place dur- 

 ing its next or chrysalis state. Later in the season the shoot 

 dies, and nature, in the exercise of its wonderful recupera- 

 tive powers, forces one of the lateral shoots to assume the 



