144 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



they are tender ; they are struggling for life. You do not 

 want any useless vegetation among them, and consequently 

 the best labor you can expend on the plantation for the first 

 two or three years is in cultivation. In five years you will 

 have a good many tall, spindling trees, that will be useful for 

 hoop-poles. Cut them out; take out each alternate row each 

 way. Then you will have your rows five by eight feet apart, 

 and you have got a lot of hoop-poles, worth from three to 

 five cents apiece to sell, and you have quite a little income 

 for your sinking fund ; very likely, enough to pay for the 

 entire outlay up to that point. 



Those trees will continue to grow, and when they are ten 

 or fifteen years old you have got good merchantable stock. 

 Thin them out again. Then you have a forest abounding 

 with tall, straight shafts, with no low branching limbs to 

 diminish its value. Your forest is well established ; you 

 have got back the money you have invested, and you have 

 found that it pays very directly to plant a forest. 



I do not know that I ought to take any more time, because 

 there must be somebody in this audience who has had expe- 

 rience in this thing. I suppose the l^est man who ever talked 

 on this subject was Dr. Warder of Ohio, who unfortunately 

 died last year and was a loss to this country. He was an 

 enthusiast, but he was a practical cultivator and raised trees 

 not only for amusement but for profit, and there did not seem 

 to be any question in the whole range of that business that 

 he was not ready to answer from his experience. I had a 

 good many of my best points from him, and if I had dreamed 

 of occupying this position to-day, I would have put into my 

 bag some of the valuable principles and remarks that I have 

 heard him utter. But I will say further, that it will pay 

 you, if you raise any hardwood for your fires, to raise hick- 

 ory. It is a great deal better to sell for cord-wood than 

 poorer qualities of wood, and we are always trying to get 

 the best hardwood to burn that we can. Or you can raise 

 good maple wood on some stray corner of the farm, for use 

 on your own kitchen fires. I do not know how many of the 

 people who listen to me can tell when a maple tree drops its 

 seed ; but I do not find many men who have noticed that. 

 Just for curiosity I would Hke to have every one here who 



