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roads there should be something more than isolated trees. There should be a rather 

 broad belt on the windy side, thickly planted with the various kinds of trees needed for 

 repairing the roads. This belt would shelter the railway from storms, catch and retain 

 the winter's snow which gives us so much trouble, and before many years supply much 

 useful timber when the supply from other sources might be exhausted. 



TREE-PLANTING ON FARMS. 



Every farm should have a belt of timber planted all along its windy side, this belt, 

 not less than fifty feet wide, should be planted thickly with the various kinds of trees 

 that grow best and fastest in the neighbourhood, the thinning of which for useful pur- 

 poses would soon be valuable, whilst the shelter it would give from prevailing winds 

 would be invaluable. All swamps not covered with trees should be planted with white, 

 and red cedar and tamarac, all of which grow best in damp ground, and produce most 

 excellent timber for various purposes. The leaves also of these trees would absorb the 

 unwholesome air which swamps generate. 



STONY GROUND. 



There is on many farms more or less of ground so rocky that it will not repay the 

 expense of cultivation, and aH such spots should be planted with trees. These may be 

 got out of the woods or farm nurseries ; or what would be easier, cheaper, and probably 

 much more effectual, the seeds of various kinds of trees could be sown, imitating as nearly 

 as possible the natural processes which have produced all the forests of the country. The 

 seeds of different trees should be gathered in the woods just at the time that they fall 

 naturally, and they should be immediately planted in little shallow holes among the stones, 

 and covered with a little earth. There the rains of autumn, the snows of winter, and the 

 sunshine of spring would bring up quite a crop of young trees, which should be fenced in 

 fi'om cattle and left to themselves. They would require no labour after the first sowing 

 and fencing except subsequent thinning out from year to year of those that were too 

 crowded or most valuable for economic purposes. If hickory nuts, black walnuts, butter- 

 nuts, chestnuts, and the seeds of sugar maples, pines and spruces were any of them or all 

 of them sown every here and there over the place intended for a grove the most valuaVjle 

 kinds and those that thrive best could be ultimately left to become great trees. After 

 ten years the annual thinning of this grove for firewood, fencing, hop-poles, railway-ties, 

 etc., would probably make it as valuable a part of the farm as any other, and when the 

 black walnut and butternut trees became large enough to be sold to cabinetmakers 1 he 

 value of the grove would be very great. The present race of farmers may say they would 

 not live to see the trees become fit for the cabinetmakers, but none the less would the 

 growth of that grove increase the value of the farm every year, and that whether the 

 owner sold it or left it to his children. 



A FORESTRY COMMISSIONER. 



What is very much needed as a preliminary to covering of a considerable portion of 

 land with these groves is the advice of scientists and experts as to the kinds of trees 

 suitable for different soils, the rapidity of their growth and the relative value of their 

 wood. This information could be collected and scattered by the judicious commissioner 

 of woods and forests in each state, just as the fish commissioner gives information about 

 fishes. To plant or sow millions of trees is just as necessary as to hatch and distribute 

 millions of food fishes. 



THE DOMINION. 



With respect to the Dominion of Canada there is great need for tree planting in the 

 fertile valley of the St. Lawrence for a considerable distance around Montreal, and still 

 more need in the prairies of the north-west. In the latter region of vast capabilities, to 

 which much attention is now turned, a system of granting land on condition of planting 

 trees might be most advantageously introduced now, as every year will render such an 



