326 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



possible, and it may seem that the State would be unable 

 to bear the financial burden that the purchase of such an 

 enormous area would impose. The last State census gives 

 the value of all the woodland in the State at something less 

 than $24,000,000. This is a large sum, but when we 

 remember the millions the State so freely spent in building 

 the Hoosac Tunnel to better the transportation facilities of 

 Boston and the eastern part of the State, and the other 

 millions expended for additions to the State House and for 

 the small open spaces about it, it may not seem such an 

 enormous undertaking. We should also remember that the 

 $24,000,000 covers the valuation of about 1,500,000 aeres 

 of land, and that it includes the 414 acres of woodland in 

 Suffolk County, at a valuation of almost $1,000,000, or 

 about $2,200 per acre; also that of Essex, Middlesex and 

 Norfolk, where the valuation is very much^ higher than that 

 of the rest of the State, for the obvious reason that most 

 of the woodland in these counties lies in close proximity to 

 cities and large towns. The census valuation of woodland 

 in the other counties is much less per acre, and the field of 

 State experiment in forest ownership would naturally be 

 largely in these other counties. The valuation of all the 

 woodland in nine of the counties, viz., Berkshire, Franklin, 

 Hampshire, Hampden, Worcester, Bristol, Plymouth, Barn- 

 stable and Dukes, is about $15,840,000. If we leave out 

 of this total the value of the comparatively few acres that 

 have been artificially planted to forest and are naturally 

 valued highly by their owners, we shall have in these nine 

 counties 279,030 acres of wood of over thirty years' growth, 

 valued at $6,270,699, or an average of $22.12 per acre; 

 and 800,012 acres of wood of a growth of thirty years and 

 under, valued at $8,718,393, or an average of $10.90 per 

 acre. In addition, there are large areas of land in these 

 counties given in the census as unimproved, unimprovable 

 and unclassified. These are mostly cheap lands, and would 

 doubtless be generally suitable for forest growth. There 

 arc of these classes of land in those counties 302,562 acres, 

 valued at $2,218,688, or an average of $7.33 per acre. In 

 the nine counties under consideration there arc 1,102,574 



