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throngs of business men find their homes ? A liberal spirit 

 will invite wealth and population in still larger measure to our 

 borders. The new comers from New York city to the shore 

 line and other progressive towns are the friends of public 

 improvements, because these are investments which ultimately 

 enrich a community. A penurious policy is penny-wise and 

 pound-foolish. It defeats its own aim of saving, and results in 

 final deterioration and loss. Men of affluence and culture 

 shun a narrow-minded and illiberal community. A good name 

 tends to enrich a town as well as an individual, while a bad 

 one may impoverish both. 



14. There is no rural improvement more practical and valuable 

 than the recovery of once fertile lands now lost to tillage. The 

 waste lands of New England and the Atlantic states are already 

 very extensive. They consist of, first, exhausted pasture land 

 once arable, second, rough, rocky hills and hill-sides, formerly 

 good grazing ground, but now so overrun with hard-hack or 

 other useless bushes as to be worthless for pasturage, third, 

 swamps, marshes, moors and bogs, and fourth, sand-barrens. 

 Except the third class here named, nearly all these lands have 

 been made barren by our improvidence and carelessness. My 

 special aim has been to encourage the recuperation of such 

 lands by tree planting. 



For the reclamation of our pastures and waste lands aban- 

 doned to hard-hack, sumac, and other worthless brush, the 

 European larch deserves to become a favorite. A native of 

 the Alps, Apennines, of the Tyrol and Carpathian Mountains, it 

 is a very hardy tree, and at home in a variety of well-drained 

 soils, especially on rough, rocky, or gravelly ground, and the 

 most rugged ravines. There are in our State large tracts of 

 bleak hill-sides and mountain declivities or summits exhausted 

 and now practically worthless, where the larch, thickly planted, 

 would soon choke out all brush, and weeds. As an orna- 

 mental tree it grows finely even in deep and rich loam, but its 

 extraordinary qualities for timber may be impaired when grown 

 on the rich prairies of the West or the best lands of the East. 

 When raised under right conditions, it combines the two qual- 

 ities of rapidity of growth and durability of wood more than 

 any other tree. More than two thousand years ago this wood 



