250 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Prof. Sargent then submitted a report upon 



A FEW SUGGESTIONS ON TREE-PLANTING IN MASSACHU- 

 SETTS. 



BY C. S. SARGENT, 

 Director of the Botanic Garden and Arboretum of Harvard University. 



Every year the destruction of the American forests threat- 

 ens us with new dangers. Every year renders it more imper- 

 ative to provide some measures to check the evils which our 

 predecessors in their ignorance have left us as a legacy with 

 which to begin the second century of the Republic. 



It may not, then, be entirely without interest to examine 

 briefly what the dangers are which follow the destruction of 

 the forests, and the methods of counteracting them, which, 

 so far as Massachusetts is concerned, are fully within our 

 reach. 



Our agricultural population is not easily convinced of the 

 necessity of tree-planting. The benefits are too vague, the 

 profits too prospective, to cause them to look with enthusiasm 

 on what seems a doubtful undertaking. 



Still, in this respect, public opinion is gradually changing, 

 and already in many of the States of the Union experiments 

 in sylviculture are being made on a sufficient scale to promise 

 the most gratifying results, and it is not improbable that at no 

 distant day, when its benefits are more clearly understood, 

 this branch of agriculture will receive at the hands of our 

 farmers the attention its importance demands. 



Proof is wanting that the total average rainfall has been re- 

 duced either in this country or Europe by cutting ofi'the forests. 

 But examples are often cited in proof that forests play an im- 

 portant part in regulating and attracting summer rains and 

 local showers ; and it is not improbable, were more data in 

 the form of carefully conducted observations available, that 

 some theory on this subject might be deduced. Certainly, as 

 Mr. Marsh remarks in his admirable book on physical geog- 

 raphy,* "it is impossible to suppose that a dense cloud, a sea 

 of vapor, can pass over miles of surface, bristling with good 



* The Earth as modified by Human Action. George P. Marsh. New York, 

 1874. 



