TREE-PLANTING IN EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 431 



from want of better soil. The native pitch-pine, though a prevalent 

 tree, seemed to suffer in some places from a disease or au insect. It is 

 a local trouble, and may be caused by some defect in the soil, perhaps 

 because not sandy enough. In speaking of seed sown broadcast upon 

 sward land, he had noticed that in dry seasons the seed would not come 

 up as well by this method, and adds : "Experience shows that where the 

 ground is suitable, it is better to plow furrows, that is, single furrows at 

 suitable intervals, say four or five feet apart, and drop the seeds in them, 

 covering lightly. If the land is too rough for a plow, then make holes 

 with a hoe at regular intervals, and drop the seed and cover lightly." 



Several hundred acres of the native pitch-pine had been planted in 

 his vicinity to improve the land and for fuel. 



Bristol County. — Mr. Morrill Allen, of Pembroke, Mass., in a let- 

 ter relating to tree-planting, written December, 1847, says :^ 



A man in Bristol County about fifty years ago planted a field somewhat exhausted 

 with acorns ; when the young trees we're two or three inches high he plowed and hoed 

 as iu a field of Indian corn ; the trees grew, to the astonishment of the whole neigh- 

 borhood, and in less than forty years were ripe for the ax. About a century since 

 there was an experiment in this town in planting the white oak for ship-timber, the 

 Buccess of which ought to have encouraged frequent repetition. The grove was in 

 cutting for timber thirty years since, and a man between seventy and eighty years old 

 told me that in his boyhood he assisted in planting these trees. It is not to the exist- 

 ing generation so helpless an undertaking as some would represent it, to plant forest- 

 trees, even those of slow growth. I recollect measuriug the circumference of an oak 

 tree in West Newbury, the acorn of which was planted by Benjamin Poore, who is yet 

 comparatively a young man, and I think it measured 27 inches. It is a well propor- 

 tioned, handsome tree. Had he planted at the same time fifteen acres oi similar soil 

 it would have become before now an inexhaustible wood-lot for the use of one family. 



The general elevation of this district above sea-level is about 80 feet; 

 highest point 210; prevailing winds southwest, and rain-fall 46 inches. 

 The native timber consisted of several species of oak, the walnut, maple, 

 Ijine, and hemlock, used for lumber A variety of trees for fuel and cabi- 

 net work are found in the forests. There has been but little clearing 

 within the last century ; the woods have simply been cut off and allowed 

 to grow again. In a few cases forest-planting has been done on a small 

 scale, but so recently that no result has been reached, though the plant- 

 ings are usually in a healthy condition. Fires set by locomotives, or by 

 careless persons, sometimes do a great deal of damage. — {Elisha Slade, 

 Somerset, Bristol County, Mass.) 



Having been, for thirty years past, more or less engaged in buying woodland and 

 cutting it off, I wish to state that I know, from careful observation, that an acre of 

 good land, where there is a mixture of the several kinds of oak and waluut (hickory), 

 cut off while young and thrifty, will produce, during the first 20 or 25 years, a cord of 

 wood yearly. I believe that most kinds of hard wood are worth 20 or 30 per cent, 

 more, for fuel, at the age of 25 years than at 75. — (A. M. Ide, of South Attleborough, 

 to George B. Emerson: Trees of Massachusetts, p. 26.) 



Essex County. — Mr. Richard S. Fay commenced, in 1846, planting on his estate near 

 Lynn, in Essex County, and in that and the two succeeding years, planted 200,000 

 imported trees, to which were afterward added nearly as many more, raised directly 

 from the seed, nearly 200 acres being covered in all. The sites of these plantations 

 were stony hillsides, fully exposed to the wind, destitute of loam, their only covering 

 a few straggling barberry bushes and junipers, with an abundant undergrowth of 

 woad-wax (Genista tindoria, L.), always a certain indication in Essex County of ster- 

 ile scil. He employed iu his plantations oaks, ashes, maples, the Norway spruce, Scotch 

 and Austrian pines; but the principal tree planted was the European larch. No labor 

 \^as expended on the land pievious to planting, the trees, about one foot high, being 

 simply inserted with a spade, and no protection has at any time been given them, save 

 against fire and browsing animal^. I recently visited these plantations, twenty-nine 

 years after their formation, and took occasion to measure several of the trees, but 

 more especially the larches. Some of these are now over 50 feeb in height, and 15 



1 Transactions of the Agricultural Societies of Massachusetts, 1847, p. 45. 



