160 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



"I will show you." In a few minutes we came to a precipi- 

 tous rock, where there was a large bronze hook or bolt in the 

 rock. Said he, "There is where the Romans made fast their 

 galleys in the old times." That is an illustration of the effect 

 upon rivers of cutting down the forests, as they have been in 

 Spain, where the hills have been denuded of them. 



Mr. Emerson. I confirm entirely everything the gentle- 

 man has said. I see the earnestness with which he speaks, 

 and I see, at the same time, that such a speech does not need 

 confirmation. It is a delight to me to pass over the hill to 

 which he has referred, and ride among his trees, as I do two 

 or three times a week all summer long, on my way to visit 

 my daughters and grand-children. Every Avord he says is 

 true, and he might say a great many things of the same kind. 



Mr. Majstning, of Reading. I have many facts to confirm 

 what has been said by preceding speakers in regard to grow- 

 ing and transplanting our native trees. 



The seeds can be sown, and if the surroundings are favor- 

 able, the result will be quite generally a success. Our native 

 trees perfect their seeds at quite different seasons, and they 

 drop at perfection ; and, with comparatively few exceptions, 

 our native forests have continued to grow with but little help 

 from man. We can take our tree seeds, and by proper sur- 

 roundings, can perpetuate them and control them to some 

 extent. Such surroundings are only learned by close obser- 

 vation and long experience. 



The seeds of the larch, for instance, which have dropped 

 along the sidewalks in our grounds, are growing in the 

 gutters, of two years' growth, ready for transplanting. Nature 

 produced seed enough from the parent tree to have grown, 

 with reasonable human aid, and produced many thousands of 

 its kind. 



We have sown the seeds of evergreens of various kinds in 

 open ground ; but such treatment is often a failure, in conse- 

 quence of a lack of shelter for the young trees. Under a hot 

 sun, they are too often killed just as they appear above the 

 surface of the soil. 



I learned something of the management of seedling ever- 

 greens and other forest trees by a visit to Robert Douglas, 

 of Illinois, who grows untold millions of evergreen trees, and 



