54: , WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



may buy woodlands which will be worth twenty 

 times their present cost within the next twenty years. 

 But better even than this would it be to buy up 

 rocky, craggy, naked hill-sides and eminences which 

 have been pastured to death, and, shutting out cat- 

 tle inflexibly, scratch these over with plow, mattock, 

 hoe, or pick, as circumstances shall dictate, plant 

 them thickly with Chestnut, Walnut, Hickory, White 

 Oak, and the seeds of Locust and White Pine. I 

 say Locust, though not yet certain that this tree must 

 not be started in garden or nursery-beds and trans- 

 planted when two or three years old, so puny and 

 feeble is it at the outset, and so likely to be smother- 

 ed under leaves or killed out by its more favored 

 neighbors. I have experiments in progress not yet 

 matured, which may shed light on this point before 

 I finish these essays. 



Plant thickly, and of diverse kinds, so as to cover 

 the ground promptly and choke out weeds and shrubs, 

 with full purpose to thin and prune as circumstances 

 shall dictate. 



Many farmers are averse to planting timber, be- 

 cause (they think) nothing can be realized therefrom 

 for the next twenty or thirty years, which is as long 

 as they expect to live. But this is a grave miscalcu- 

 lation. Let us suppose a rocky, hilly pasture-lot of 

 ten or twenty acres rudely scratched over as I have 

 suggested, and thickly seeded with hickory nuts and 

 white oak acorns only : within five years, it will 

 yield abundantly of hoop-poles, though the better, 



