FORESTRY AND ARBORICULTURE. 55 



eral health. In fact, it is quite possible, if the present 

 methods of lumbering are persisted in, that the price of tim- 

 ber will advance sufficiently to enable our people to engage 

 in forest culture on quite a large scale. 



Our original forests were long ago cut, but owing to the 

 decline of some other agricultural pursuits and the growing 

 interest in forest culture, the woods throughout the State are 

 likely to increase rather than diminish in quantity and to 

 occupy many of our pastures and present bare and rocky 

 hillsides. It therefore becomes important for us to care for 

 our growing forests, and by judiciously selecting species and 

 properly planting now oiios, be prepared to have what tim- 

 ber we can to sell to our friends and noifjhbors when the 

 fifty years' supply now standing in the American forests is 

 exhausted. In the position we hold in this respect wa may 

 be considered as fortunate, or, at least, thare need be no 

 danger of meeting with misfortune. 



Taken by itself, however, Massachusetts is in one way 

 unfortunately situated, for the reason that the two great' 

 rivers of iniporiancu in connection Avlth our maaufacturins: 

 interests, the Connecticut and Merrimac, both take their 

 rise a long distance to the north of us in New Hampshire. 

 Any attempt, therefore, to control the iiow of their waters 

 by systems looking to a retention of a forest growth on the 

 mountain slopes at their sources is absolutely impossible, as 

 far as the power of Massachusetts to do so is concerned. 



The same may be said of some of the smaller rivers 

 which furnish water power to mills in other portions of the 

 State. In fact, the only streams at whose sources the State 

 could by any means within itself regulate the cutting of 

 the forests or replant denuded hillsides are some of the 

 smaller tributaries of the Connecticut and the Housatonic. 



As this state of things has long existed here, many manu- 

 facturing corporations have supplemented their water power 

 with steam, or have provided themselves with reservoirs 

 which control m a more or less satisfactory degree the flow 

 of the water in the streams upon which their business de- 

 pends. Thus, at great expense, provisions have been made 

 to take thfe place of the forests, the natural regulators of the 

 rivers, although, even with these safeguards, a system of 



