24 



®l)c jTcmncr's iilontl)lij Visitor. 



ing, Jock, when ye'er sleeping.' Before pro- 

 ceeding, however, more minutely with those 

 considerations which we hope will induce some 

 few to attempt forest planting, we wish to no- 

 tice, and if possible, to overcome the objection 

 that is always foremost, when we press tree 

 planting upon the notice of our friends and 

 neighbors. It is an objection more deeply fel 1 

 than expressed, because we are hardly willing to 

 have so selfish a hindrance appear in all its 

 strength, and it is this: We are told, that it is a 

 species of improvement from which we ourselves 

 cannot hope to reap the benefit, since our lives 

 are too short to witness the maturity of trees of 

 our own planting. This is a weak and selfish 

 objection, at the best, and it is false, too, in its 

 premises. The first Duke, John of Alhol, for 

 example, saw a British frigate built entirely of 

 larch of his own planting. It will be seen, 

 moreover, if we will examine a little into the 

 subject, that the benefits commence at once in 

 the increased value given to the land planted. 

 In another point of view, as a provision for our 

 children, how important planting becomes. — 

 There is no surer way of making a provision for 

 one's children than by planting timber trees. 

 The advantage of restoring portions of our 

 worn-out lands to wood, are also most important 

 to New England welfare. We are every year 

 developing more highly the mechanical arts, and 

 in their progress, wood, in various forms and for 

 numerous purposes, is required. Our lands 

 have been already stripped of the most valuable 

 kinds for these purposes, and no measures are 

 being taken for a new supply. They have been 

 pastured upon and exposed to our cold and 

 piercing winds until, in many cases, the power 

 of vegetation is nearly lost. Now, who can not 

 foresee a prospect for an increased demand and 

 value for every species of wood that grows? Do 

 we not perceive this enhancement from year to 

 year ? 



" We come now to such data as we have been 

 able to obtain from practical persons, as to the 

 profit and loss of planting ; and we shall com- 

 mence with those furnished by the English and 

 Scotch planters, who have made planting the 

 business of a life-time, in a country where plant- 

 ing forest trees has been practised for centuries. 

 And first, we shall extract from the Transactions 

 of the Highland Society, a slight notice of the 

 Larch, a tree which has been found to agree sin- 

 gularly well with our bleakest and most hungry 

 soils : 



'"Larch will supply ship-timber at a great 

 height above the region of the oak ; and while a 

 seventy-four gun-ship will require the oak lim- 

 ber of seventy-five acres, it will not require 

 more than ten acres of larch ; the trees in both 

 cases being sixty-eight years old. The larch, 

 instead of injuring the pasture under it, im- 

 proves it. The late Duke of Athol planted in 

 the last year of his life six thousand five hun- 

 dred acres of mountain ground solely with 

 larch, which in the course of seventy-two years 

 from the time of planting, will be a forest of 

 timber fit for the building of the largest class of 

 ships in Her Majesty's navy. It will have been 

 thinned out to four thousand trees per acre. 

 Each tree will contain, at the least, fifty cubic 

 feet, or one load of timber, which at the low 

 price of one shilling per cubic foot, only half its 

 present value, will give £1000 per acre, or in all, 

 a sum of £0,500,000 sterling. Besides this, there 

 will have been a return of £7 per acre, from the 

 thinnings, after deducting all expense of thin- 



ning and the original outlay of planting. Fur- 

 ther still, the land on which the larch is planted, 

 is not worth above ninepence or one shilling per 

 acre, yearly rent. After the thinnings of the 

 last thirty years, it will be worth ten shillings 

 per acre, by the improvement of the pasturage.' 

 "Montieth, an experienced timber planter and 

 appraiser of timber land, gives the following 

 statement of the profit of an oak plantation for 

 twenty years, on one hundred acres of land, 

 worth five dollars per acre yearly rent, and 1 

 have placed the estimate in dollars, instead of 

 pounds sterling. 



" If the proprietor, he says, plants one hun- 

 dred acres of ground, the trees being four feet 

 distant from each other, each acre will contain 

 3422 plants. 



" ' Plants and planting per acre, $30. . .$3000 00 

 Rent of land for 10 years, at $5 pet- 

 acre 5000 CO 



Interest on rent 1125 00 



Expenses of thinning, pruning and 

 trimming for 10 years, at $5 

 per acre 5000 00 



Total expenditure $14,125 00 



Deduct produce of 1000 trees 



thinned from each acre, 



first 10 years, at $10 per 



acre $1000 00 



Deduct value of 2422 trees 



per acre, remaining, at 



$37 50 per acre 3750 00 4,750 00 



9,375 00 



Balance at the end of ten years 9,375 00 



Expense of thinning and pruning 



for second ten years, at $10 



per acre 2000 00 



Rent of land for same period, at $5 



per acre per annum 5000 00 



Interest do 1125 00 



Interest on $9,357, old balance for 



ten years 4685 00 



Total outlay for 20 years $22,185 00 



Deduct produce of 1000 trees thin- 

 ned out from each acre, at 12J 

 cents per tree, at $125 per acre. . . 12,500 00 



Deduct for enhancement of value 

 during the last ten years of 

 1422 trees per acre, remaining 

 at $100 per acre 16,000 00 



28,500 CO 

 Leaving an actual profit, after pay- 

 ing rent, interest and expen- 

 ses, of 6315 00 



" Up to this period, the comparative gain is small, 

 but the same calculation continued for ten years 

 more, will show a profit of $1 18,335 00, and the 

 end of forty years from the time of planting, the 

 round sum of $205,000 00. 



"These calculations, as Montieth remarks, 

 may to those who have paid no attention to ibis 

 subject, excite wonder, if not doubt, but in mak- 

 ing them, he says he has been careful to lessen 

 ratliei than to exaggerate the profits. 



"The following facts, given in the Encyclope- 

 dia Brittancia of Art and Agriculture, confirm 

 Mr. Montieth. Mr. Pavier, in the fourth vol. of 

 the Bath papers, computes the value of fifty 

 acres of oak timber, in one hundred years, to be 

 $60,000, and Evelyn calculates one. thousand 

 acres of oak in one hundred and fifty years, at 

 no less than at three million and three hundred 

 thousand dollars. Both these writers, who are 



of known authority, made their calculations at a 

 period when the timber was of less value than at 

 the time of Montieth's calculation, by at least 

 one-half. 



" Let us hear what Mr. Low, in his valuable 

 work, ' Landed Property and the Economy of 

 States,' says. 'The planter has been character- 

 ized as the most disinterested of men, because 

 be labors for posterity. The claim of the planter . 

 to this distinction may be questioned, although 

 he may enjoy the thought that the workmanship 

 of bis hands will not perish with him. Like 

 every one who labors from choice, the planter 

 experiences gratification in his pursuit The 

 little tree which he places in the ground, quickly 

 becomes a part of the landscape around ; and 

 thus the taste is gratified, almost as soon as the 

 work is done. In a few years more, his woods 

 yield shelter from the winds and thus increase 

 I he 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, in 

 deed 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 sixty 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 enclosing it is twenty-five dollars per acre. 

 Then rating money at five per cent., supposing 

 it to increase at compound interest, the amount 

 will be found by calculation, for sixty years to- 

 gether with the assumed yearly rent of one dol- 

 lar per acre for the same period, to be nine hun- 

 dred dollars per acre. So that. if the wood be 

 worth that sum, it will return the capital, inter- 

 est and rent. But the sum of $900 per acre 

 would be very small, including the progressive 

 thinnings made during the period for timber of 

 even the least valuable kinds, of sixty 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, varying 

 from five dollars to one shilling per acre ; anoth- 

 er large item is fencing and enclosing. 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 recom- 

 mend 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 enclose them. They possess no yearly val- 

 ue, to he placed among the items of expense in 

 forest culture, 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 trfke 

 any worn-out field, huckleberry pasture, or other 

 waste land, and to convert it into a wood planta- 

 tion, whether of birch, larch, pinen, oak, ash or 

 maple, or all combined. And we will endeavor 

 to give a fair statement of the transaction, valu- 

 ing 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 the cost, we assume the work to 

 be well done; for, unless it be so, it had better 

 not be attempted. Merely putting an acorn in 

 the ground, or any number of acorns, is not for- 







