GROWING TIMBER TREE-PLASTTIXG. 53 



every farmer realizes that he can't afford to grow lit- 

 tle, gnarly, villainously sour or detestably bitter- 

 sweet apples, when, by duly setting a graft at a cost 

 of two dimes, he may make that identical tree yield 

 Greenings or Pippins at least as bounteously. I pre- 

 sume the cumulative experience of fifty or sixty gen- 

 erations of apple-growers has ripened this conclusion. 

 Why do they not infer readily and generally that 

 growing indiiferent timber where the best and most 

 valued would grow as rapidly, is a stupid, costly 

 blunder ? It seems to me that whoever has attained 

 the conviction that apple-trees should be grafted 

 ought to know that it is wasteful to grow Red Oak, 

 Beech, White Maple, and Alder, where White Oak, 

 Hickory, Locust, and White Pine, might be grown 

 with equal facility, in equal luxuriance, provided the 

 right seeds were planted, and a little pains taken to 

 keep down, for a year or two, the shoots spontaneously 

 sent up by the wrong ones. 



North of the Potomac, and east of the Ohio, and 

 (I presume) in limited districts elsewhere, rocky, 

 sterile woodlands, costing $2 to $50 per acre accord- 

 ing to location, etc., are to-day the cheapest property 

 to be bought in the United States. Even though 

 nothing were done with them but keep out fire and 

 cattle, and let the young trees grow as they will, 

 money can be more profitably and safely invested in 

 lands covered by young timber than in anything else. 

 The parent, who would invest a few thousands for 

 the benefit of children or grandchildren still young, 



