INTRODUCTION. IX 



tive welfare, should be laid open. And the facts pre- 

 sented by a full survey of the natural productions of 

 the State, can hardly fail to bring direct advantages, 

 for the present and for the future. 



The survey of the forests of Massachusetts, making 

 known to the whole community the important fact that 

 a greater variety of valuable trees is to be found within 

 its limits than are known as native in the whole of 

 Europe ; that it is wastefully and wantonly destroying a 

 forest, which any enlightened country in Europe would 

 willingly bestow a treasure to create ; that its climate 

 and soil are well suited to many of the most valuable trees 

 of other temperate countries, and that already there 

 are thousands of acres lying barren and unimproved, 

 which might easily be clad with a flourishing growth 

 of trees, cannot but excite the attention of some of 

 those who have it in their power to arrest this evil and 

 to avail themselves of these truths. 



The survey of the shrubs, and herbaceous and other 

 plants, may, in like manner, be of great use, by showing 

 that there exist materials for improvements in agriculture, 

 and for use in many of the arts and in medicine, which 

 might be substituted for others now imported from abroad. 

 If, for example, it should appear that the wild rice, so 

 valuable to the native indians of the western lakes, and 

 which, without being known, occurs in many parts of 

 the State, is capable of being cultivated in intervales 

 now overflowed and producing only sedge and worth- 

 less grasses, and of being used as a substitute for oats 

 as fodder, the fact would not be lost upon an agricul- 

 tural community like ours. So the statement of the fact 

 that lichens exist, similar to those which are much em- 

 ployed and highly valued in dying, and that our sea walls 



