EECLAIMING LAND. 147 



going to supply your mills for any length of time?" He 

 told me he had no apprehensions in that regard, for he be- 

 lieved that the annual growth was fully equal to the annual 

 consumption. 



Again, when the farmers were sowing those light, arable 

 fields of Plymouth County with the white pine, and starting 

 those beautiful forests which have been spoken of in former 

 papers by our friend Mr. Slade and others, white pine logs 

 found a ready market at |8.50. They have fallen in price, 

 and find a slow market now-a-days at $7 ; and what the mar- 

 ket will be when a forest that is planted this year shall 

 mature, no man living can foretell. 



Further, when these forests were planted on those fields, 

 so admirably adapted for the cultivation of Indian corn, 

 there were no fertilizers for the farmers to purchase except- 

 ing the manure that was made in that vicinity. To-day, 

 the average farmer who knows what he is about can buy 

 fertilizers adapted to raising crops upon those fields, or any 

 land of that character, with profit. This present season I 

 have cultivated corn upon twelve acres of land of that char- 

 acter which had not been plowed for many years ; it had 

 been exhausted, so to speak, of plant food by former owners 

 years ago, in their cultivation of corn and rye ; but with the 

 application of just $15.50 worth of fine-ground bone and 

 muriate of potash I have husked 1,000 baskets of corn from 

 that twelve acres. There was no hand labor until the har- 

 vest time. That corn, gentlemen, was raised at a profit. 

 I can and probably shall do the same thing next year with 

 a larger application, hoping with the same labor to receive 

 larger returns. So much for the idea of setting white pine 

 upon land that is adapted to the cultivation of most of our 

 cereals and veo;etables. But there is another class of land 

 of a different character, like that described by Captain 

 Moore, which it seems to me is far more important and 

 should claim the farmer's attention. There is hardly a farm 

 in the Commonwealth that has not some waste land of that 

 kind. I never did any more profitable farming in my life, 

 allow me to say, than in reclaiming those waste bogs ; and 

 as my elders who have preceded me have taken the liberty 

 to draw from their experience upon their own farms, I 



