FOREST PLANTING. 145 



For instance, it would be very desirable to make large 

 plantations of white pine, for future supplies of timber. 

 But the white pine is of no value in its youth, in fact is 

 hardly worth cutting till it is forty or fifty years old, and 

 does not come to maturity till seventy-five, and in order 

 to get the besf timber the trees should be ten or fifteen 

 feet apart. But this of course is unnecessary during 

 their early years, and the intermediate space may be 

 filled with hickory, oak, ash, cedar, spruce and larch, 

 which may be removed and sold for hoop-poles, fencing, 

 posts and railroad ties, at different periods from six to 

 twenty years of age, by which time the pines would have 

 attained a size sufficient to require all the ground, while 

 the previous thinnings would have yielded an income 

 sufficient to pay a handsome interest on the value of the 

 land for the time when it otherwise would have yielded 

 no return. 



The above general process of extending the forest 

 plantations should be going on from year to year in the 

 vicinity of every station, and for lands thus planted a 

 proportionately higher price should be demanded. 



In addition to these plantations made by the railroad 

 itself on its own lands before offering them for sale, a 

 system should be adopted for furnishing every settler 

 with a certain number of trees, proportionate to the 

 amount .of land purchased by him of the company. 

 These should comprise an assortment of fruit and forest 

 trees and shrubs, and should be put at the lowest price 

 at which they could be afforded. They would add but 

 slightly to the price per acre in the purchase of a quarter 



