TREE-PLANTING IN BARNSTABLE CO., MASS. 429 



and Corsican pines. Tho alder I have found to be a rapid grower, very hardy and 

 ornamental, well adapted for a screen or a shelter to other trees. Some, which were 

 set out at 1^ to 2 feet high in 1871, are now 8 and 10 feet high. The birches have done 

 well, and so with the pines; the sycamore and Norway spruce not as well, needing, 

 perhaps, two years on the nursery or a better soil. The Scotch larches were heated 

 on the voyage, and, the summer followirg being very dry, many died. Those that sur- 

 vived have recovered, and, being now finely started, are making a vigorous growth. 



My first purchases of foreign trees were planted about my house, in the openings of 

 a thirty-acre lot of oak and beech woods near by, and on the bare gravelly hills over- 

 looking the Sound and raked by strong winds. The trees I imported in 1853, after two 

 years in the nursery, I planted out, some in clumps of a quarter and half an acre each, 

 on an old pasture which I did not "seed down," and which had not a tree upon it. I 

 surrounded them with fences of wire drawn through cedar posts to keep off the cattle, 

 ■who find in them a grateful shade, now the trees are too large to be injured by them. 

 Others I placed along the walls of my cultivated fields, and some on the margin of 

 my old deciduous woods, so as to afford a shelter and a variety of foliage. My impor- 

 tations of 1871 and 1872 were planted as soon as received on an old and poor pasture- 

 laud, where I intended they should remain. My method was to run with oxen deep 

 single furrows 7 feet apart, and then set the trees in them 7 feet from each other. Tho 

 land is roagh and of the average soil of a worn-out pasture. These have done well, 

 except those larches whicli died, as before stated, in consequence of being heated on 

 the voyage, taking into the account the saving of labor and the use of more valu- 

 able land, by not putting them into a nursery, though if placed there at the first start 

 they may have seemed to do better. 



The trees were introduced as a matter of taste, and as an experiment, without the 

 calculation of any immediate advantage. Still, I think if it had been near a market, 

 or one had been sought, there would have been a profit in the sale of the surplus 

 youug trees, and now already in the sales of wood, if only the thinnings. The land 

 has been, no doubt, improved by the deposit of thousands of loads of leaves upon it 

 and by the shade afforded it, while it has been lightened and lifted by the permeation 

 of the roots of the trees. Much of the labor has been done at intervals of farm- work, 

 and chiefly without professional supervision. 



When I bought my place in the fall of 1850, except a few stinted red cedars on Par- 

 kei-'s Point, and some white cedars in the swamps, there was not an evergreen tree 

 within three miles of my house, and hardly any tree of any kind in sight of it. The 

 woods (oak, beech, and hickory) were in the dells and valleys behind the hills fronting 

 the sea, and it was maintained that trees would not grow and could not be made to do 

 so in the face of the salt-laden winds from the south and southwest. The exposure 

 was certainly great and the Eoil poor, and trees planted singly or sparsely, perhaps, 

 conld not have resisted it, but close planting made a shelter, and those not specially 

 from an inland habitat (like the white maple) have done well, and seem to the manor 

 born. 



In answer to the question, " If you were to do tbe work over again, 

 could you improve on tbe methods employed by you f Mr. Fay replied : 



I think I should recommend, where the ground was not too stony and rough, instead 

 of sowing seed broadcast, to run parallel furrows, not deep, running east and west (so 

 the mid-day sun will not strike across them) seven feet apart, and drop the seeds in 

 them, merely pressing them into the ground, and not covering them more than this, if 

 at all. This, in the first place, especially on a hill-side where the furrows should be 

 run at right angles with the slope and not vertically, will prevent the seed from 

 washing down to the low places; in the second place, the seed will be likely to come 

 up more at the same time, and would be more uniformly distributed than can be done 

 broadcost, unless sowed when there is snow on the ground, and also less seed would 

 be required and less would be waited ; in the third place, the side of the furrow would 

 tend to shade the young germ, which, on the open sward, in a dry time, is apt to be 

 withered and destroyed by the heat. In my i)lantings, where the trees have come up 

 too thickly, I have transplanted them to spots where the seed has failed or was not 

 sown, but this makes extra labor. If sowed in furrows, the seed might be dropped at 

 intervals of four or five feet, and even then, in a few years, if all were to come up 

 they would require thinning. In this case, the surplus could be sold or planted else- 

 where. Tbey would make good nursery plants. 



As to imported trees, when it is considered that the average cost, landed at the farm, 

 of English-grown plants one or two feet high, is less than one cent each, it would be 

 a saving of time to procure them and set them out in the place where they are to 

 grow. There is a little uncertainty in their condition, but, as a rule, they come in 

 good order. My first importations I put in the nursery for two years and then set 

 them out. This requires two plantings. My last I placed, as I have stated, in the field 

 where they were to grow, in parallel furrows. I think it would be better to plow 

 cross furrows the same distance apart, or say 10 feet each way,' and plant the trees at 



