FORESTS MODIFY CLIMATE. 149 



has taken for his experiment a hill of twenty-five acres, the 

 top of which is higher than any of the land in the neigh- 

 borhood. Undoubtedly, you can see that hill in Bylield from 

 here. It was a bare hill from top to bottom. He has covered 

 it with trees from the bottom to the top, and has done a 

 thing on the top which I was surprised and delighted to see. 

 He had planted it Avitli various trees that he wanted to grow 

 there, but they could not grow. The question then was, 

 What should he do? He got pine trees from abroad, and 

 from the north, and the hardiest of them, those that will 

 grow anywhere, he planted there : pines, spruces and hem- 

 locks, which will grow anywhere. He planted them, and 

 when they had made a good growth, he put down close by 

 the side of each, under its shelter, an oak or a hickory, or a 

 maple, and that oak, or hickory, or maple flourished perfectly 

 under the protection of the pines. I would advise every one 

 of you who has not been there, to go and see what a beautiful 

 work has been done. I say such a good work has not been 

 done to my knowledge anywhere else in Massachusetts. 



Now, I repeat, it is very important to cover all the hills 

 with trees. By doing it you will improve the climate. The 

 loss of trees in Massachusetts has injured the climate very 

 much. It has been growing worse and worse for over a hun- 

 dred years. I was told by an old gentleman in Worcester, 

 forty years ago : " There are a great many plants we cannot 

 cultivate in our gardens now, — nice, delicate things, — which, 

 when I was a boy (he was fifty or sixty years old then), 

 grew perfectly well ; but, since then, all these hills have been 

 denuded, the forests on them have been cut down, and the 

 winds from every quarter come in without being impeded at 

 all, and that makes our climate so bad here in the centre of 

 Worcester that many of the delicate plants which flourished 

 perfectly well thirty or forty years ago cannot be raised 



DOW." 



Gentlemen, j^ou can all do something towards remedying 

 this evil. Take care that the tops and the sides of all the 

 hills shall be covered with forests. By so doing, you are not 

 only protecting your own gardens so that you may cultivate 

 delicate plants in them, but you are rendering your homes 

 more comfortable and more healthy. The great difficulties 



