STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 71 



wanted me to assist the scholars in getting some trees and in setting 

 them out. I told her it was a very busy season for me, right in 

 planting time. I presume the writer of this paper is not a farmer 

 and of course he cannot appreciate as farmers would, how exceed- 

 ingly difficult it is for farmers to leave in tlie midst of planting to ob- 

 serve Arbor Day, although he may appreciate it to some extent. 

 But I told the teacher I would do what I could, that I would spend 

 half a day at least. When we arrived at the forest I was surprised 

 to find that the trees had commenced budding. ''Now," said I, 

 "children, we are here, and I wish you to observe that these trees 

 are too forward to be successfully taken up and transplanted ; the 

 buds are so far forward I am afraid they will not live, but we are 

 here and we will do the best we can." The boys helped me all they 

 could and we took up four maples and carried them to the school- 

 yard ; I cut them back severely and they were set out, principally 

 by the children themselves ; I helped them what I could. Two of 

 the trees lived and two died. I said to the children, "Now if they 

 die we will make an attempt another year and perhaps we will dig 

 the trees up earlier, before Arbor Day, and I will hul them in some- 

 where, and then we will plant them on Arbor Day, and we will be 

 sure they will live and so we will make the day more successful " 



With regard to forestry, I do wish the Legislature of this State 

 would see fit to grant some encouragement. I wish the Governor 

 might recommend, in his message to the Legislature, for them to 

 grant some encouragement to the farmer. I am a farmer, but I do 

 say that the farmers as a rule, are the most careless of people in 

 regard to what is for their own interest. When they cut off the 

 wood the}' do not take pains to enclose the land, they let the cattle 

 run over it and browse the young plants that spring up and thus 

 destro}' what would eventual!}^ make a fine growth of trees. On 

 my home farm there was a heavy growth of some fifty cords to the 

 acre, and when we cut it off we left ten acres to see what it would 

 grow up to. There began to spring up a growth of hard wood, some 

 poplars, white birches, and among them some black spruce ; and we 

 would turn our cattle out on each side of the wood-lot in the fall, 

 and they would run through the forest, and 1 found afterwards that 

 nothing was coming up there of any value, and as I didn't care to 

 fence in that forest I concluded I would let the whole go and cut 

 the whole off and make a pasture of the whole, as I had another 

 wood-lot only about a mile from my place, in the town of Man- 



