370 THE PEOPLE'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



systematizes the work by planting the trees so that they can be 

 cultivated and so that all the land will be occupied. Nature is 

 never hurried, it makes no difference to her if a hundred years 

 pass before the tree is large enough to be valuable, but man 

 can not afford to wait. As a rule it is not well to replant the 

 old wood lots, for it is better to start our timber plots on old 

 worn fields and leave the fresh virgin soil of the wood lot 

 when cleared for grain. 



Forest trees should be started in a nursery, and transplanted 

 at one or two years old. The quick-growing varieties, such as 

 the locust and soft maple, should be transplanted at one year 

 old, as if they have received proper care they will have attained 

 sufficient size by that time. Most varieties can be bought at 

 from two to fifteen dollars per thousand, of nurserymen who 

 make a specialty of growing them, and some the farmer can 

 grow himself. The soft maples mature their seed early in May, 

 and this may be gathered and planted immediately, and with 

 good care the trees will grow from three to five feet high the first 

 summer. All forest trees should be thoroughly cultivated after 

 being set out in the plantation, till they are well established and 

 have made a good start to grow. Under favorable circumstances 

 they will only require to be cultivated the first season after 

 transplanting, but two, or even three years of cultivation will 

 often pay. As a rule they should be planted much thicker 

 than they are to stand, as this will induce a straight, upward 

 growth. 



My first planting of forest trees was made in 1863, at which 

 time I planted a lot of soft maples and evergreens. The 

 maples were two years old from seed and the evergreens about 

 two feet high. In twenty years the largest of these maples 

 standing singly girted forty-six inches, four feet above the 

 ground, and those standing in a row at an average distance of 

 three feet apart in the row, had a circumference varying from 

 twenty-five to thirty-five inches at the same height, and carried 

 a good-sized trunk to the height of twenty-five feet. The Aus- 

 trian pines averaged forty inches in circumference near the 

 ground, and thirty inches as high up as I could reach. In 1872 



