212 STATE r,OAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



It will of course be much easier for laud-owners to preserve the timbers now 

 standing than to supply its place by a new growth. The slow development of 

 trees has always been a great obstacle to the generiil cultivation of them for 

 purposes of screens and timber. And it is but natural for a people like the 

 Americans, who live so wholly in the present and who take so little thought for 

 the morrow, to hesitate and neglect to plant a crop for which they must wait 

 years before they can reaj) the harvest. Jiut with a little care and attention 

 the woodlands now forming portions of our farms may be kept undiminished, 

 and at the same time furnish the needed supplies of wood for fuel and for the 

 usual farm purposes. In cutting for wood, only the dead and decaying trees 

 should be taken first, allowing the thrifty, growing ones to stand. In a tract 

 of forty or llfty acres of woodland this will afford an ample supply of fuel and 

 some to spare, as a considerable number of trees in a forest are always more or 

 less touched with decay, while their value for wood is scarcely impaired. The 

 young trees which spring up in great profusion frotn the seed will soon attain a 

 considerable size, if all grazing animals are shut out of the woods. Nothing 

 works such injury to young trees as roving cattle or sheep, which eagerly 

 browse the tender shoots; and I would advise each farmer who desires to raise 

 a crop of forest trees to supply the place of those he is obliged to cut down, to 

 exclude his animals from his woods as carefully as he does from his corn-lield. 

 The gain of a few acorns and beech-nuts for the pigs, or a little scattering pas- 

 ture for the cattle, will be small in comparison to the value of the timber 

 which a few years hence may be cut from the surplus of his forest growth. 



Where but little clearing has been done, as is the case with some tracts of 

 land still remaining in this vicinity, if the owner will consult his future inter- 

 ests, he will leave upon the south and west sides of his farm a belt of timber at 

 least two rods in width, in which the underbrush shall be allowed to grow 

 thickly, thus affording a good protection from the southwest winds. Observa- 

 tions taken at the Agricultural College for a series of years have determined 

 the fact that by far the most frecpient winds prevailing in the central portion 

 of our State, and in cold weather the coldest and most bitter winJs, blow from 

 the southwest. There is greater necessity, therefore, for shelter and protection 

 to fields from winds in this quarter than from any other point of the compass. 

 If the timber has been largely cut from farms, as is the case in the more 

 thickly settled and older portion of the State, it would be of great benefit and 

 advantage to the farmer to ])lant a few rows of thick-growing trees along the 

 south and west sides of his farm. A good selection of trees for this locality 

 would be oak, ash, and maples for the center of the belt, with rows of Scotch 

 and Austrian pine, or American arbor-viti"c, for the outside. The European 

 larch, if it can i)0 obtained, is a most desirable tree for this purpose. These 

 trees, if planted in rows eight feet a})art, and four feet apart in the rows, will 

 in a surprisingly short time form a thick growth of considerable height, which 

 will afford great protection to orchards and crops. Observations have shown 

 that a screen of trees will protect one rod in width of land for every foot of 

 its height. 



As the trees increase in size they may be thinned out from time to time, and 

 the poles thus cut utilized in many ways. 



Trees thus planted in belts, grow much more rapidly than is generally sup- 

 posed. In a paper written by C. S. Sargent, Director of the Botanic Garden 

 and Arboretum of Harvard University, and printed in the report of the Massa- 

 chusetts State Board of Agriculture for 1875, giving suggestions on tree plant- 



