REPORT ON FOREST TREES. 



29 



shelter from the winds and thus increase the value of the lands 

 around^ while it is rarely beyond the expectation of human life to 

 look for a direct profit from the wood as it advances to maturity. 

 To expend capital on planting, indeed is merely to lay out a fund to 

 increase at interest, and often at a high rate of interest. Let it be 

 supposed that a wood requires 60 years to reach the age of good 

 timber ; that the land is worth one dollar per acre* of yearly rent in 

 its original state ; and that the expense of planting and inclosing it 

 is twenty-five dollars per acre. Then rating money at 5 per cent, 

 supposing it to increase at compound interest, the amount will be 

 found by calculation, for 60 years together with the assumed yearly 

 rent of one dollar per acre for the same period, to be nine hundred 

 dollars per acre. ISo that if the wood be worth that sum, it will re- 

 turn the capital, interest and rent. But the sum of $900 per acre, 

 would be very small, including the progressive thinnings made dur- 

 ing the period for timber of even the least valuable kinds, of 60 

 years standing, and therefore, it will be seen that wood may yield a 

 high return on the capital expended. 



It will be seen in all the estimates of profits of forest plantation in 

 England, a considerable item of cost is the annual rent of land, va- 

 rying from five dollars to one shilling per acre ; another large item 

 is fencing and inclosing. James Brown, in a work of much utility 

 and excellence upon this subject, makes the cost of fencing one half 

 the expense. In the planting which we propose to the farmers of 

 Essex, we shall make no account of these items of expense in Eng- 

 land, because the lands which we shall recommend are those that 

 have been used as pastures and fields, worn out by poor cultivation, 

 which are almost universally fenced or walled, and which are hardly 

 worth in themselves the walls that inclose them. They possess no 

 yearly value, to be placed among the items of expense in forest cul- 

 ture, although we shall allow interest upon one that we shall assume. 

 With these premises, we now propose to urge upon every farmer 

 in the County, to take any worn out field, huckleberry pasture, or 

 other waste land, and to convert it into a wood plantation, whether of 

 birch, larch, pines, oak, ash or maple, or all combined. And we 

 will endeavor to give a fair statement of the transaction, valuing 

 his own time and attention at the highest market price for farm labor. 

 In the first place, it must be observed, that in the estimates of 



* In this extract, pounds and shillings are converted into dollars. 



