372 THE PEOPLE'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



vacant, and the young plants are not likely to receive the care 

 they require when scattered over so much land. Enough 

 plants to set an acre can be grown on from five to ten square 

 rods, and it is always best to grow the plants in the nursery, and 

 at least one year will be gained by this plan. 



The plantation above mentioned was cut off clean and mar- 

 keted in 1868, but as the owner is dead I have no means of 

 knowing what amount of money was realized, but I know that 

 it was several hundred dollars per acre. The trees had been 

 thinned first for bean poles, and when larger for fence stakes, 

 until at the time it was cut off clean they stood about eight feet 

 apart each way, or at the rate of six hundred and forty to 

 the acre. 



In 1879, eleven years from the time it was cut clean, I 

 noticed the owner bringing out a load of posts from it, and I 

 made a careful examination of the plot. I found that each stump 

 had thrown up from three to seven sprouts, the largest of which 

 were now being cut, and I estimated that there were from 

 twenty-five hundred to three thousand trees to the acre. This 

 thinning process has now been carried on for five years, and in 

 the spring of 1881 over four hundred posts to the acre were cut, 

 and there are still trees enough left to make a dense forest. This 

 plantation is on a piece of level land that is separated from the 

 rest of the farm by a ravine. 



A few years later, about 1856, 1 think, the same man planted 

 eight acres of steep hill-side in locust. The land slopes to the 

 south, and is of irregular shape, following the windings of a 

 creek. As this plot lies near the road, I have seen it almost 

 every day for twenty-five years, and have been able to watch 

 the growth of the trees, and to note the product of grass. 

 As soon as the trees were out of the way of calves, blue-grass 

 was sown, and for twenty years the sod has been undisturbed, 

 for when the first growth of timber was cut off in 1870, the 

 field was not plowed. In the spring of 1883 I examined it, and 

 found from two hundred to five hundred trees growing to the 

 acre, two-thirds of them large enough for posts, and tall enough 

 to make two cuts to the tree. There had been several hundred 



