28 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



the Forestry School, recently established by the Connecticut 

 State Agricultural College. I propose to give him five minutes 

 to say something of the scope and purpose of his department 

 in forest work. 



Professor BALLOU. Ladies and gentlemen: This is 

 rather unexpected. You have listened to some gentlemen 

 who have told you some facts, gathered by their experience, 

 which have been certainly very interesting and instructive. 

 I have nothing of fact in my own experience to give you, 

 practically nothing, at least nothing that I care to present to 

 this audience, but, as Mr. Gold has informed you, he wanted 

 me to tell something of what we propose to do. This is our 

 plan: The trustees of our college have planned to give a 

 course in forestry broader than we have ever given before, 

 and broader than most of our agricultural land grant colleges 

 have been in the habit of giving. Forestry has been taught 

 generally, or a so-called forestry, but it has been a sort of a 

 branch of landscape gardening in which the characters of 

 different trees were taught and their shape and use, etc., and 

 it has been allowed to go at that. 



We have some land that is adapted to this purpose. Some 

 of it is worthless now. It bears a few little clumps of bushes, 

 a few straggling specimens of trees, and quite a quantity of 

 smooth round stones that are of no use. We have some- 

 where in the vicinity of thirty or thirty-five acres of good 

 timber, oak and chestnut largely. Now we propose to plant 

 that worthless land with a variety of trees, using those kinds 

 which have proven themselves in the State to be of some 

 value for timber, in one form and another, and other kinds 

 that may go with them. We shall try to find out what 

 timbers that are not in much demand now can be grown. 

 I am not going to describe different methods, but we are 

 going to try to see whether the farmer can afford to plant 

 lands with trees for the sake of his woodland or for the sake 

 of getting out what timber he needs for repairs, for posts and 

 rails, and such things. We are going to take measurements,. 



