CULTURE OF PINES. 361 



growth, like the white birch, will be found to be more 

 profitable than the use to which pastures are now gene- 

 rally put. 



I know many pastures, of good, strong soil, never 

 ploughed within the memory of the living, some of 

 which are known not to have been ploughed for a 

 hundred and fifty years, which require from eight to 

 ten acres to a cow, so entirely buried are they in moss 

 and bushes. Such lands can be planted with pines at a 

 small cost, and would soon be covered with a growth 

 which would pay a large percentage on the outlay. 



I have examined over a thousand acres of cultivated 

 pines, in different parts of the country, varying in age 

 from three months to twenty years, and can testify to 

 the surprising rapidity with which such a plantation 

 will cover the ground, concealing the fact of their 

 being planted by the hand of man, and assuming the 

 appearance of a dense forest. 



In one instance, the owner informed me that his plan- 

 tation had averaged him a cord to the acre every year, 

 for twenty years, during which it had been planted, 

 while the land, a light, barren sand, had apparently been 

 improved, and a thick undergrowth of hard wood was 

 evidently ready to succeed the pine, when the oppor- 

 tunity offered. I have seen a growth of pitch pine, 

 made in one year, of over two feet six inches in length, 

 by measurement, and a growth of white pine, made in 

 the same time, of two feet nine inches. The growth of 

 wood is generally interrupted by the drought, during 

 the hottest months of summer, and then starts out a 

 new growth in the autumn ; but, in very moist seasons, 

 it continues, with extraordinary vigor, all through the 

 season. The average growth would not, of course, 

 equal that stated above. 



But still there are circumstances, and they are not by 

 si 



