210 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



I have trees of this year's growth from six inches to a foot 

 high. The rock maple and the Norway spruce are bearing 

 very poor crops this year. It is quite a study to know how 

 often to expect these crops. 



Mr. CusHMAN. I well remember some years ago being 

 told, by a farmer in my vicinity, that the white pine bore 

 seeds only once in three years. He remarked that some 

 trees in the forest would bear seeds every year, but an indi- 

 vidual tree would bear its seed only once in three years. 



While I am up I wish to allude to the highly interesting 

 paper read by my friend, Mr. Slade, this morning. Perhaps 

 I was more particularly interested in his paper than many in 

 the hall ; knowing, as I do, quite intimately, the cases that 

 he cited, of the white pines that had been planted and grown 

 up, many of them, in my native town of Middleborough, where 

 many of those plantations that he mentioned are situated. 

 We held a Farmers' Institute, of the Plymouth County Agri- 

 cultural Society, on the 14th of last month, in that town ; 

 and the local judge of the town, who gave us the address of 

 welcome in the morninfj, after a careful and thorouo:li investi- 

 gation of the industries of the town, stated to us that last year 

 the sales from white-pine lumber for box boards, mostly, 

 amounted to one hundred thousand dollars. It has been more 

 in more prosperous years. So, gentlemen, you can see that in 

 one town in the Commonwealth the white-pine forests must 

 have netted an income — which has mostly gone into the pockets 

 of farmers — of one hundred to one hundred and fifty thou- 

 sand dollars, and that year after year. Does it not pay to 

 encourage an industry that will bring one hundred and fifty 

 thousand dollars a year into the pockets of the farmers of a 

 single town in this Commonwealth? I know, sir, that it 

 pays to transplant white-pine trees. It has been a branch of 

 my farm work from my boyhood, to cut down the white 

 pines and market them. I have also done something in set- 

 ting them out and transplanting them, and I think Mr. 

 Slade made a very good showing of the profit of the business. 

 I think if he had advocated settino; the white birch with the 

 white pine, he could have made a better showing. I have 

 had good success in planting the white birch thick amongst 

 the white pine ; setting the white-pine trees ten feet apart in 



