74 BOAED OF AGEICULTURE. 



any in our State. Why not go thither and occupy the rich, wild 

 lauds? There are various reasons. Every improvement in agi'i- 

 culture, in the management of the forests, and in the use of the 

 other natural resources of our State, makes it capable of sustain- 

 ing a larger population and thus enabling more of our young men 

 and women to remain with us. The advantages of our life in the 

 long-settled parts of the Bay State are greater than can be expected, 

 for more than a generation at least, in newly settled regions. 



We live in a climate and on a soil best adapted, from their very 

 severity and sterility, to bring out the energies of mind and body, 

 and to form a race of hardy and resolute men. We have our 

 churches, our schools, our lyceums, our libraries, our intelligent 

 and vh'tuous neighbors, and we wish our children should [';/()•■,• up 

 under the influence of the institutions which our forei'atliors liavo 

 formed and left to us, and which we have been entleavoring to 

 improve. 



Mr. Taft. I have been very much intcrostecl in the 

 learned and instructive essay just read, but from some of 

 the conclusions I should beg most respectfully to differ. Is 

 it a fact that the forests of this State are being denuded ? 

 In my judgment, in the county of Worcester there is to-day 

 a quarter more acreage of wood growing than there was 

 forty-five years ago : not so heavy wood, but the land is 

 covered. And when the essayist advises the farmers of 

 Worcester County to set forests with a view to profit, it 

 seems to me I would rather he would do it than do it 

 myself, if I were a young man. Forty years ago in South 

 Worcester good hard wood was worth eight dollars a cord ; 

 to-day it is a drug at five or six dollars. There is no 

 call for it ; we are burning something else ; and the 

 great question Avith many people is. What are we to do to 

 keep these hill farms from growing up to wood? AVhy, 

 within rifle-shot of my house is the site of a saw-mill that 

 has sawn logs ever since 1712. Forty or fifty years ago 

 my father owned it and he used to saw thirty, forty and fifty 

 thousand feet a year ; but last year four hundred thousand 

 feet were sawed at the saw-mill standing on that site, and 

 there is more wood growing in that neighborhood, I think, 

 than there was forty years ago. I agree with the idea of 

 setting out trees l)y the roadside, certainly, but if the essay- 



