ON FOREST TREES. 83 



and birch families, which are best adapted to our soils. The oaks 

 have been planted to a much more limited extent. Acorns should be 

 gathered about the middle of October, and planted immediately, a 

 few days drying will often prevent them from ever vegetating. In 

 planting there should be a very light covering with earth. It is be- 

 lieved to be best to plant-on land recently ploughed, and some culti- 

 vation among the young trees will greatly promote the growth of 

 them. A man in Bristol County, about fifty years ago planted a field 

 somewhat exhausted, with acorns ; when the young trees were two or 

 three inches high, he ploughed and hoed as in a field of Indian corn; 

 the trees grew to the astonishment of the whole neighborhood, and in 

 less than forty years were ripe for the axe. About a century since 

 there was an experiment in this town in planting the white oak for 

 ship timber, the success of which ought to have encouraged frequent 

 repetition. The^grove was in cutting for timber thirty years since, 

 and a man between seventy and eighty years old, told me, that in 

 his boyhood he assisted in planting those trees. It is not to the ex- 

 isting generation, so hopeless an undertaking, as some would repre- 

 sent it, to plant forest trees even those of slow growth. I recollect 

 measuring the circumference of an oak tree in AVest Newbury, the 

 acorn of which was planted by Benjamin Poore, who is yet compara- 

 tively a young man, and think it measured twenty-seven inches ; it 

 was a well proportioned handsome tree ; had he planted at the same 

 time fifteen acres of similar soil, it would have become before now an 

 inexhaustible wood-lot for the use of one family. The gentleman 

 who has made the donation to your society, possibly may 

 be regarded by some as an air-castle builder, but if the association 

 are faithful in carrying out his views, of which there is no doubt, it 

 will in less than thirty years appear that he has been the efficient in- 

 strument in raisinar into the air multitudes of beautiful and useful 

 trees, and thus meeting what will ere long become a pressing want in 

 the community. 



Respectfully, 



Your Obt. Servt. 



MORRILL ALLEN. 

 To JoHN^W. Proctor, Esq. 



