44 PROCEEDINGS OE THE 



It is well known that a house surrounded by forest 

 trees is nearly always healthy. A gentleman who 

 occupied such a home for ten or twelve years in one 

 of the eastern counties of Virginia had no sickness 

 of consequence in his family and did not pay a phy- 

 sician fifty dollars during that time. He afterwards 

 purchased a large farm, surrounded by large tracts of 

 cleared land with few trees, and lost in a few years 

 several members of his family, and contributed to the 

 doctors a goodly part of his profits. 



The ceaseless reproduction of the pine forests of 

 the South Atlantic States is all that has saved the 

 farms and farmers of that section from destruction. 

 For over two hundred years there has been a ceaseless 

 war upon the forest. The early settlers cut it down 

 and burned it up, and their children, with few excep- 

 tions, followed their example. Then came the general 

 consumption for rails and wood; the demand for 

 mechanical industry; the destruction for liquidation 

 of farm debts; the sale of cordwood and sawed 

 lumber to northern markets, till every tree of the 

 original growth in most of the States have been re- 

 moved. The second growth of old field pine is now 

 receiving the same treatment, with smaller profit to 

 the seller and poorer results to the consumer. Could 

 the farmers of these States be persuaded to adopt the 

 intensive system of farming, and have their poorer 

 lands grow up in timber, they would improve their 

 own condition, and hand down to their children valu- 

 able possessions. A gentleman of my acquaintance 

 informed me that where he planted corn when a boy, 

 he had cut from the land, a few years ago, cordwood, 

 which he sold for eight dollars a cord in New York 

 city. 



Many thoughtful persons have claimed that the wood 



