54 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



cultivate it. Many acres of such land are now growing up to 

 wood, and if left to nature will inevitably gradually' work into 

 forest. He has a farm which contains a pasture of about fifty 

 acres, where such a change is going on, and he assists it as far as 

 possible. The best thing that owners of rough pastures can do 

 with them is to leave them to grow up into forest, and help the 

 process a little. A little care to exclude cattle will be well repaid, 

 for the food they gel from them is not valuable, and if the injury 

 to the forest is reckoned, the food obtained will not balance it. 

 The White Pine is the best tree for such pastures as have been 

 mentioned : the lumber is always in demand. The trees which 

 have grown up in this way have been mostly cut off at an early 

 age, and little has been left to grow into large timber. The 

 speaker had a black walnut tree two feet in diameter, which he cut 

 down, and which made considerable lumber for the inside finish of 

 his house. He had found the black walnut difficult to transplant ; 

 he had tried trees two or three feet high, and they had lived, but 

 had not made a rapid growth, — not as much as he expected. 



Mr. Hunt agreed with Mr. Strong that the climate has changed 

 here as a result of cutting oflF the forests. The culture of the early 

 settlers was not as deep or as complete as ours is now. He thought 

 that the planting of trees in the West would bring about a change 

 in the climate there. 



Mr. Hersey's experience had been that black walnut trees are 

 not difficult to transplant. 



Mr. Strong thought that generall}- it would be better to procure 

 seedlings of forest trees than to sow seed. The seedlings can be 

 bought very cheap of nurserj'-men. Young White Pines can be 

 picked up in the woods without cost. 



J. W. Manning said that the Red Pine is very abundant in some 

 localities. It is adapted to peculiar soils, where rye will not grow. 

 At Fryeburg, Me., there is a forest of these trees 80 feet high. 

 There is a Black Walnut in Saugus almost 5 feet in diameter, and 

 one in Billerica 12 feet in circumference. The black walnut is 

 easy to transplant. 



Col. Henry W. Wilson thought we could easil}' satisfy' ourselves 

 that raising forests is a good thing ; but there is little inducement 

 to do it here, for it offers a temptation to every loafer to go through 

 the young plantations with a gun and dog, spreading destruction 

 by fire. Col. Wilson alluded to the associations connected with 

 trees, and the love entertained for them ; they are a source of satis- 



