482 PLYMOUTH SOCIETY. 



Improvements. 



Three entries were originally made for the pro.spective pre- 

 miums offered by this society. " For the most extensive forest 

 of any sort of trees suitable for fuel or timber, raised from the 

 seed, not less than a thousand trees to the acre, which shall be 

 in the most flourishing condition, and more than five years old 

 in September, 1852," (two of the competitors having with- 

 drawn,) we recommend the award of the first premium, of $30, 

 to Daniel Alden, of ]\liddleborough ; he having planted six and 

 a half acres, and succeeded in raising more than ten thousand 

 forest trees of a healthy appearance and vigorous growth, on a 

 soil so totally exhausted by excessive cultivation with grain 

 crops, without manure, that it produced little else than white 

 moss. 



In the early settlement of the country, one of the greatest 

 obstacles to the cultivation of the soil was the interminable 

 forests, and it became necessary for our progenitors, in order to 

 clear the land for tillage, to cause indiscriminate '■'■ strip and 

 waste^^ of what we now consider one of the most valuable 

 products of the soil; beyond the immediate supply of their 

 wants for fuel and log cabins, the stately forest tree was con- 

 sidered an unwelcome "curaberer of the ground," and doomed 

 to extermination so far as the wants of an increasing population 

 should need the soil for cultivation. 



In the selection of soils, the early pioneers generally over- 

 looked the most fertile, for sandy plains of easy culture, — then 

 rich in the decayed and decaying forest foliage ; these were 

 cultivated so long as they would yield remunerating crops 

 without the application of fertilizing manure, and then aban- 

 doned, and the woodman's axe laid waste another tract, which 

 in turn was cultivated, exhausted and abandoned. 



This system of devastation and exhaustion has been con- 

 tinued in this county, with few and feeble attempts at repro- 

 duction or renovation, until our most valuable forests are nearly 

 exterminated, and very many barren fields left desolate and 

 worthless for cultivation. 



The inroads thus made, together with the more recent but 

 not less fatal enormous draft upon our forests, for propelling 

 steam engines, by the increasing demand for lumber, and the 



