17 



nicious habit of burning over recently cleared lands for the 

 sake of one poor crop of rye or a few years of scanty pastur- 

 age. While the inventions of modern times have provided 

 innumerable substitutes for the wood which two centuries ago 

 seemed so indispensable for fuel, house and ship building, and 

 a thousand uses in the arts, it is still an indisputable fact that 

 every country, to be the comfortable abode of civilized man, 

 must have no inconsiderable portion of its surface covered 

 with living trees. Wherever wealth is amassed and luxuries 

 are sought, the planting of trees for ornament and shade, as 

 well as for fruit, will be largely practised. The millions re- 

 cently expended iipon the Central Park of Xew York and 

 Prospect Park in Brooklyn, are indications of this tendency in 

 the United States. But in Europe, and especially in England, 

 where the law of entail exists, and untold revenues are hered- 

 itary from generation to generation, the royal palaces and the 

 mansions of the nobility are environed by the most magnifi- 

 cent gardens, parks and forests which the art of man can 

 create. Henry Ward Beecher is reported to have said that 

 he never had any suitable appreciation of the power of the 

 Almighty, as exhibited in creation, until he undertook to level 

 a small hill. Those who have attempted grading for orna- 

 mental purposes will agree that landscape gardening is one of 

 the most expensive luxuries, and where immediate effect is to 

 be produced by planting large trees, the cost is enormous. 

 This is clearly demonstrated in Paris, where one hundred 

 thousand shade-trees are maintained by the government at an 

 annual expenditure of three hundred thousand dollars. These 

 trees have to be reset on an average every twelve years, and 

 the expense of the larger ones is from twenty dollars to twen- 

 ty-five dollars each. 



In Europe, all the principal agricultural schools teach the 

 whole art of forestry with great thoroughness, and the utmost 

 care is everywhere bestowed upon the planting, keeping and 

 cutting of timber. As a large proportion of the forests belong 

 either to the government or to wealthy nobles, it is compara- 

 tively easy to apply there the most perfect system which 

 science and experience have hitherto been able to devise. In 

 Massachusetts, we can only hope, by the thorough education 

 of our college graduates, by frequent discussions, with the 



