100 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



when planted being about three feet high. None of them died, 

 and now their average height is about thirty-three feet, and the 

 diameter at the base about nine inches. 



Of deciduous trees we may see in ahnost ever}' village examples 

 of rapid and health}' growth in turf land. Where the growth has 

 been unusually rapid may also be found evidence of a great abun- 

 dance of plant food ; but perhaps no greater amount than is often 

 found in pasture land that produces such luxuriant crops of brush 

 as many of them do. I would not advise the attempt to grow any 

 crop on a soil that has not in it, naturally or otherwise, an 

 abundance of plant food, but I feel certain that land which will 

 produce large crops of brush naturally, may be made, with a 

 little outlay, to produce a satisfactory growth of either forest or 

 fruit trees. 



In planting such land it is essential to success to select that which 

 is suited to the growth of the kind of trees desired. Before planting 

 I would line out the land, by stretching a wire or cord across the lot 

 and setting stakes, to secure uniform intervals between the trees. 

 Then, if there is much brush, I would remove it along the line of 

 the row. If time and help are limited I would cut only a path two 

 or three feet wide, and remove the rest when other work was less 

 pressing than during the spring. One of the best ways to get rid 

 of the brush is, in the fall after the ground is frozen, or in open 

 winters, when there is no snow upon the ground, to take a broad- 

 bladed bog-hoe, grind it sharp, and hoe off the brush close to the 

 surface of the ground. All the smaller brush like that of huckleberry, 

 blueberry, sheep laurel, etc., may be easily cut close to the ground, 

 and many of them will fail to start again ; while the grass and other 

 herbaceous plants will work in rapidly and assist greatly in chok- 

 ing out brush which starts later into growth. The brush should 

 be raked up in piles between the spaces for trees, and the holes dug 

 in these cleared paths. It may look hke a great task to dig holes 

 in much of our rough, stony land, but as it is of little consequence 

 whether the trees are exactly in lines or not, the variation of a few 

 inches will almost always enable us to dig holes at sufficiently near 

 the proper distance, and very few spaces will have to be passed by. 

 A man with proper tools — a stout sharp spade, a bar, and a bog- 

 hoe with a pick on one end — will dig from two hundred to five 

 hundred per day. In a piece of newly cleared woodland, where 

 the rocks were as thick as they will average in our pasture lands, 

 and the ground was full of roots of the heavy growth of wood re- 



