210 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



hazardous as any on which policies are issued by insurance 

 companies. 



It is estimated that if all the lands in Barnstable County, 

 planted to pitch pine between the years 1836 and 1849, were to 

 be offered and sold at auction, they would bring an average 

 price of more than fifteen dollars per acre. Several tracts 

 could not be bought for twice that sum. Small lots could be 

 selected, planted twenty-five years ago, in favorable locations, 

 where the present growth of wood is worth at the rate of thirty- 

 five or forty dollars per acre, the original cost of the land and 

 planting not exceeding five dollars per acre. Many thousand 

 acres have been planted in Barnstable County, and the pitch 

 pine is now considered as certain a crop as can be planted. 

 The days of experiment have passed. 



Several years since, a large importation of Norway pine seed 

 was made at JSTantucket. Much of it was planted there, and 

 considerable quantities in other portions of Eastern Massachu- 

 setts, but it was not found to be adapted to the soil and climate. 

 It germinated well, but very many of the young plants were 

 killed by the drouth the first season, and from one cause and 

 another, nearly all that, was planted are now dead. In Nan- 

 tucket very fine groves of young Norway pines, planted from 

 the seed, are to be seen ; — but there the pitch pine is preferred. 

 The white pine succeeds better some eight or ten miles from the 

 sea-coast. 



A variety of pine, the seed whereof was imported from France, 

 and thence called the French, has been tried. It is a beautiful 

 evergreen, and is said to be the kind which has been so success- 

 fully cultivated on the coast of France. A few that have been 

 planted on loose sand have grown tolerably well. If this variety 

 will grow on the beaches of our sea-coast, it would be well to 

 plant them as a screen to protect the lands within. 



The conclusion at which all in Barnstable County have 

 arrived, is that the pitch pine is the most profitable forest tree 

 that can be cultivated. In other portions of the State, there are 

 probably other trees that could be more profitably cultivated. 



The soil best adapted to the pitch pine is a yellow, sandy 

 loam, a soil containing so little clay that it will not bake or 

 crack. When the pitch pine grows naturally, loam or gravel 

 suitable for the repair of sandy roads is very seldom found. On 



