FOREST TREES. m 



FOEEST TKEES. 



"WORCESTER WEST. 



From the Report of the Committee. 



A reference to the remarks which accompany the offer of pre- 

 miums which your committee were to award (if there had been 

 any competitors), shows, that the trustees of the society were 

 willing to shift from themselves the responsibility of an implied 

 belief in the importance of forest culture for the interest of 

 agriculture, to the shoulders of the legislature ; and the cu- 

 rious may find, by reference to the margin of the statute book, 

 chap. 66, sect. 8, in what year it was that the assembled wisdom 

 of the Commonwealth essayed to encourage the raising and pre- 

 serving of oaks and forest trees, " to perpetuate within the 

 State an adequate supply of ship timber." But the era of ship 

 building as a profitable branch of industry in Massachusetts has 

 passed away before the supply of ship timber by any means has 

 failed, and it may not be unwise to modify that statute so as to 

 provide that " such premiums may be offered as shall tend to 

 preserve the beauty of our scenery, the fertility of our soil and 

 the salubrity of our climate," and let the ship building follow 

 the great law of supply and demand. 



Let a son of Massachusetts be placed on the boundless prairies 

 of the West, where, far as the eye can reach, no sight of timber 

 relieves the uniformity of the view, and he will learn how much 

 of the beauty of New England is owing to her forest trees. 

 Ride through a section of country broken and uneven, where 

 the demands of business and a carelessness of the future have 

 caused the stripping off from the hills of the forests which cov- 

 ered them, and you may see how possible it is for man to make 

 ugly and repulsive that which God and Nature have made beau- 

 tiful and attractive. 



Those of us who heard the distinguished delegate of the 

 Board of Agriculture — whose presence with us-added so much to 

 the enjoyment of the occasion, and whose enthusiasm of manner, 

 elegance of expression and extent of research, have rendered the 

 science of agriculture his debtor, and the farmers everywhere 

 his friends, as he discoursed upon the crops in Essex in other 



