34 HAND-BOOK OF TREE-PLANTING. 



value of thousands of dollars, could have been 

 cut to the manifest advantage of the remaining 

 trees. Can any one doubt that Mr. Fay's stony, 

 sterile acres were put to a profitable use ? 



A somewhat similar experiment was made 

 by a brother, Mr. J. S. Fay, on the southwest- 

 ern portion of Cape Cod, on a tract of land 

 about one hundred and twenty-five acres in 

 extent. It is now densely wooded, but when 

 planted was as forbidding, perhaps, as any 

 land to be found. It was fully exposed to the 

 cold northwest winds in winter, and to the 

 fierce gales of the Atlantic and their saline 

 moisture, so hurtful often to tree-growth. As 

 to the character of the land, Mr. Fay says: 

 " My land is made up mainly of abrupt hills 

 and deep hollows, sprinkled over with bowl- 

 ders of granite. The soil is dry and worn out, 

 and what there is of it is a gravelly loam. 

 The larger part consisted of old pastures, and 

 on the one hundred and twenty-five acres not 

 a tree of any kind, unless an oak, that sprang 

 out of the huckleberry-bushes here and there, 

 barely lifting its head above them for the wind, 

 and, when attempting to grow, browsed down 



