TIMBER GROWING FOR PROFIT. 373 



posts cut to the acre from this plot, so that the trees now stood 

 in clumps of from three to five, in rows about one rod apart 

 each way. 



In the summer of 1883 the present owner of this land, at 

 my request, examined his books to see what his sales had been, 

 and he reported 6,608 posts and stakes sold in four years, at 

 an average price of fifteen cents each, making $991.20. The 

 farm, which contains one hundred acres, has been rented at $350 

 a year during this time, and the income from these ten acres 

 eight of which are unfit to cultivate has averaged $247.80 per 

 year for the four years. The larger part of the posts were 

 from the thinnings of the grove, and there can be as many more 

 sold during the next four years, and the plantation is continually 

 renewing itself. In my judgment this land has produced double 

 the grass that it would have done if exposed to the sun, and 

 while I do not think it is as nutritious as that grown in the open 

 field, young stock do fairly well on it. 



In the spring of 1867, thirty- three locust trees, which stood 

 in a row not far from my house, were cut and made into posts. 

 I do not know the age of these trees, as they were standing 

 when I moved to the State in 1848, but they were not far from 

 twenty-five years old at the time of cutting. They made an 

 average of twelve good posts and six fence stakes each, and the 

 wood from the limbs paid for cutting and splitting the posts. 

 There grew from the stumps and roots of this row two hundred 

 trees, and when the owner, thirteen years later, began cutting 

 posts from them, I found that the largest of them would make 

 four post lengths, and were large enough to split into two posts 

 at the butt, and second cut. In the fall of 1883 I again exam- 

 ined this plot, and counted one hundred trees large enough for 

 posts (although many had been cut), and nearly as many smaller 

 ones. This hundred trees would average three posts to the tree, 

 and as there was but an eighth acre of land occupied this would 

 give a handsome profit. 



My first planting of locust (1,800 trees), was made on a 

 piece of cold, wet land, which I could not conveniently drain. 

 The soil is a heavy clay, with a compact yellow clay subsoil. 



