(39 1 ) 



At the present time, not only is the cutting ot timber and 

 the burning of underbrush prohibited, but the people are 

 even required to keep to the established roads in order not to 

 wear away any of the low herbaceous growth and thus per- 

 haps to cause a bare spot which might be the starting point 

 for a wind cut. Warning notices are everywhere posted 

 through the woods, and on Town Hill, a dune one hundred 

 feet high, well within the limits of the town, may be seen 

 the following notice : " All persons are forbidden travelling 

 up or down this hill excepting in the public road." 



So far as measures for re-foresting are concerned these 

 have hardly progressed for a sufficient length of time to 

 judge fairly of their ultimate success. Under the State Act 

 known as Chapter 420 of the Laws of 1892 the Trustees of 

 Public Reservations were directed to prepare a map of the 

 Province Lands, collect information, and make suggestions 

 for their future care and preservation. Their report, made 

 to the Legislature of Massachusetts, was published as House 

 Document No. 339 (Feb., 1893) and may also be found in- 

 cluded, as Appendix III., in the Second Annual Report of 

 the Trustees of Public Reservations [Mass.] for 1892, issued 

 in 1893. In this report they suggest that the management of 

 the lands should be placed in the hands of the Board of Har- 

 bor and Land Commissioners, which was subsequently done, 

 and experiments were at once instituted to ascertain what 

 kinds of vegetation would be best suited to the dunes, in order 

 that they might be re-forested and the drifting of sand pre- 

 vented. Unfortunately I could not secure definite informa- 

 tion in regard to the earlier attempts at planting, but from in- 

 formation obtained from unofficial sources and judging from 

 the remnants of some abandoned plantations, the first vegeta- 

 tion which it was sought to establish was apparently largely of 

 introduced species of pines (Pinus sylvestris L. ?) and Scotch 

 broom (Cytissus scoparius (L.) Link.). These were not a 

 success, however, as they were either winter-killed or else 

 were smothered by the sand and those who had the matter in 

 charge finally decided to follow the sequence indicated by 



