INTRODUCTION. 7 
has not been obtained, and their children are likely to in- 
herit a poor, worn-out farm instead of that competency 
which their father expected to have left them. Suppose 
these men had left one half their farms covered with the 
original forest, or if it was already cleared when they came 
into possession they had planted one half with forest trees, 
and then expended all their labor upon the other half, they 
would have produced better crops and with more profit ; 
_ one half of their farm would have been rich, and the other 
half covered with a forest that would be a fortune worth 
inheriting. 
Thousands of men are toiling this day to lay up wealth 
for their children, when if they would invest a small 
amount in land and then plant a few acres of our best 
forest trees, their money would grow into a fortune by the 
time their children had grown into manhood. To some 
this may appear visionary; but the writer has lived long 
enough to see trees grow from saplings that would hardly 
bear his weight at ten years old, up to great trees two feet 
in diameter, and he has scarcely passed the half-way house 
- of three-score and ten. 
In many portions of our country we need forests, not 
only for supplying us with timber, but for protection 
against winds and hurricanes. The farmer’s grain is often 
prostrated by winds that never reached his fields until 
these protecting forests were destroyed. Fruit-growers 
are seeking the best means of shelter for their orchards, and 
a remedy for that dry atmosphere which sweeps throug? 
their gardens, shriveling up their finest specimens, checking, 
if not entirely annihilating, their ardor for fruit-growing. 
