ON FOREST TREES. 81 



er, and a beautiful tree, but the least valuable of the oaks for fuel 

 or timber. There is one species of the live oak group, I mean the 

 willow oak, which grows so luxuriantly in the states but little south 

 of this, that I have no doubt that it would grow here. 



The time for sowing the acorns is in the autumn, immediately after 

 they have fallen from the tree. It is very difficult to keep the acorns 

 through the winter, and it is necessary only, when they are to be 

 transported to a distance. They should be placed just below the sur- 

 face. The plants must for some years be kept free from weeds. I 

 suppose the most profitable way of doing this is that practiced in the 

 peach-orchards in New Jersey which are for some years covered with 

 crops of beans, potatoes, or something else suitable to the soil. 



The first acre, sown or planted as a nursery, will bear plants enough 

 for many acres of forest. As they grow larger they may be thinned 

 out and transplanted ; and when too large for that, may be gradually 

 thinned for poles or for fael. I suppose that either for ornament or 

 for timber forest, it would be a great advantage to continue to culti- 

 vate between the trees until they case so deep a shade that nothing 

 would profitably grow. 



If recently cleared forest land is to be restored to forest, ploughing 

 may be necessary, but probably not subsoil ploughing, as the roots 

 will have kept the ground open and porous by their own penetration. 

 The thing to be principally regarded is the character of the previ- 

 ous growth. Land ought not to be chosen which has already been 

 covered with oaks, unless the cultivator is willing to go to the ex- 

 pense of trenching to the depth of two or three feet, to bring to the 

 surface unused, virgin soil. 



It would be well to cultivate all the different species, as different 

 species are adapted to different situations ; the swamp oak and mossy 

 cup to moist land, the rock chesnut to dry, rocky hills, the red to 

 sandy, the white to clayey, the black and the scarlet to hard and 

 hungry soils. 



Perhaps it would be well to interpret "oaks" as including the oak 

 family, and thus taking in the beech and chesnut ; the former for its 

 beauty as a tree near dwelling houses, the latter for its great rapidity 

 of growth, and for its value as fencing and building stuff. 



As the terms of the trust to the Agricultural Society are so gen- 

 eral, perhaps it would be well to give an opportunity to those 

 who wished to save time by forming plantations of trees already 



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