Profitable Tree Planting 



or SO for boxboards they are set nine or ten feet apart each way. 

 If clear timber of the best quahty is desired, they are set four 

 feet apart each way so that they will grow tall and lose their 

 lower limbs. This kind of timber requires longer time to grow, 

 and it must be pruned and thinned as it needs it. The price 

 it brings is higher. Access to market and cost of the necessary 

 labour determine which course to pursue. Mr. Lyman believes 

 that a thickly planted young forest properly thinned will in fifty 

 years produce as much lumber as it would produce in twice that 

 time if left unthinned. 



Hon. Augustus Pratt of Massachusetts once planted thirteen 

 acres of blueberry thicket to white pines. It took one man eight 

 days to do it. Forty years later he went in and cut from eight 

 acres between forty and forty-five cords of box-board logs which 

 he sold at the mill for |6 per cord. He got considerable fuel 

 out of the tops. The five acres remaining he held untouched 

 for a few years then sold them for more than $1,000. 



A small pine forest in Enfield, Connecticut, is noteworthy. 

 Two quarts of pine seed per acre were sown in September broad- 

 cast with rye on the worn-out sand plain, which had been first 

 ploughed and harrowed, then rolled. No further attention was 

 paid to either crop. The rye shaded the seedlings as long as 

 they required shade. The slow, imperfect growth achieved is 

 not what it would have been if Mr. Cutter had had it in his care. 

 But the soil has been enriched by the litter of the forest, and 

 there is considerable good timber. Desert land has been 

 reclaimed. 



Certain facts have been learned from the study of white- 

 pine plantations. They are worth bringing together and empha- 

 sising. 



1. Cleared land is the best for a pine plantation. 



2. Hilly, rolling or level land, moderately dry, with not too 

 dense a ground cover, is best. 



3. Swampy land will not do at all. 



4. Land with scattering brush gives young seedling pines 

 the shade they need. 



5. Land thickly set with stumps of hardwoods which produce 

 dense coppice growth will kill out the young pines. 



6. White pine grows well in sandy and exposed situations 

 if jirotected from the direct influence of salt winds. 



478 



