CULTURE OF TREES. 123 



avoid the appearance of thriftlessness, which barely returns the 

 vahie of labor and seed bestowed upon it. And how much of 

 every farm might be rendered doubly productive by a little 

 more of that labor and nutriment now so widely scattered as to 

 be in a great measure lost. 



What our interest manifestly enjoins, is the contraction of the 

 area of our grass and tillage land to the right limit of profitable 

 farming; and after appropriating a sufficient breadth of the 

 balance to pasturage, to devote every improvable rod of the 

 remainder to the growing of wood ; not a half naked, unsightly 

 waste of scrub oaks and brushwood ; but a plantation well set 

 with varieties suitable for fuel, ship timber or mechanical pur- 

 poses, such as the oak, ash, birch, maple, hickory and pine. It 

 is only by heightening the productiveness and enlarging the 

 bounds of our woodland, that we can hope to arrest this ten- 

 dency to extermination ; to bring up the supply to the measure 

 of our probable wants, and to restore ourselves in some degree 

 to our former condition of home reliance and domestic supply ; 

 a condition ever to be desired, but especially in times of war 

 and blockades. For many years we have been becoming more 

 dependent for the products of the forest, upon others. The 

 lumber for our houses, the timber for our ships, the bark for 

 our tanners, the materials for all our mechanics who work in 

 wood, has been sought for abroad. And this want will continue 

 to be felt until we commit ourselves more fully to that course of 

 policy in this regard, which our highest interest so plainly points 

 out. 



But there are other considerations we would present as an 

 inducement to the cultivation of trees. If, as we are told, nature 

 abhors a vacuum, so also does she loathe nakedness. While 

 she cannot consent to the one, she puts forth all her efforts to 

 prevent the other. To clothe her offspring, to hide her deformi- 

 ties, to array in robes of ever varying hue and form her manifold 

 creations, is her earnest purpose. To carpet the ocean's bed ; 

 to drape the mountain's crags, with her mosses and lichens ; to 

 plant on hill-side and plain, in meadow and dell, her grasses 

 and ferns ; to rear in tlie valley depths, and on the mountain 

 heights, her pines and her oaks, her cypresses and her cedars, is 

 her pastime. Ere man was created, before the sun, moon, or 

 stars were set in the heavens, even on the third day of the work of 



