FOREST CULTURE 75 



twenty times their present cost within the next twenty 

 years. But better even than this would it be to buy 

 up rocky, craggy, naked hillsides, and eminences 

 which have been pastured to death, and shutting 

 out the cattle inflexibly, scratch these over with 

 plow, mattock, hoe, or pick, as circumstances shall 

 dictate; plant them thickly with chestnut, walnut, 

 hickory, white oak, and the seeds of locust and 

 white pine. Plant thickly and of divers kinds, so 

 as to cover the ground promptly and choke out 

 weeds and shrubs, with full purpose to thin and 

 prune as circumstances shall dictate. Many farmers 

 are averse to planting timber because they think 

 nothing can be realized therefrom for the next 

 twenty or thirty years, which is as long as they expect 

 to live. But this is a grave miscalculation. Let 

 us suppose a rocky, hilly pasture lot of ten or twenty 

 acres, rudely scratched over as I have suggested, 

 and thickly seeded with hickory nuts and white oak 

 acorns only. Within five years it will yield abun- 

 dantly of hoop-poles, though the better, more promis- 

 ing half be left to mature, as they should be; two 

 years later another and larger crop of hoop-poles 

 may be cut, still sparing the best, and thenceforth 

 a valuable crop of timber may be taken from the 

 land; for if cut at the proper season (October to 

 March), at least two thrifty sprouts will start from 

 every stump; and so that wood will yield a clear 

 income each year, while the best trees are steadily 



