FOREST TREES. 105 



in 1774, and in 1783 tlic young duke had planted two hundred 

 and seventy-nine thousand trees. Between 1786 and 1791 he 

 planted six hundred and eighty acres with five hundred thou- 

 sand larches. 



Thus he continued to prosecute the work of larch-planting 

 upon the barren hillsides until 182G, when he and his prede- 

 cessors had planted more than fourteen millions of larch trees, 

 covering more than ten thousand acres. It is estimated that 

 a forest planted with larches will in seventy-two years from 

 the time of planting furnish timber for building the largest 

 ships. Before this time the trees will have been thinned, 

 leaving about four hundred trees to an acre. Allowing fifty 

 cubic feet of timber to a tree, at a shilling a foot, and you will 

 have the product of one thousand pounds sterling per acre, of 

 the poorest land, consisting of rocks and shivered fragments 

 of schist. It is stated that the white larch on the duke's 

 plantation, sixteen hundred feet above sea level, eighty years 

 after it was planted, produced three hundred cubic feet of tim- 

 ber tit for any use. The larch is superior to the Scotch pine, 

 and will in half a century make as much wood as the pine will 

 in a century. The Scotch larch resembles the American larch, 

 or hackmatack, as it is called. 



There is much sandy land in central Massachusetts that 

 might successfully be planted with the seeds of the white pine, 

 which is a rapid grower. The cones mature so that they may 

 be gathered in the winter, and they do not open so that the 

 seeds can escape by Nature's processes until early spring — the 

 best time for artificial sowing. The seeds, says Loudon, re- 

 quire from thirty to fifty days to germinate, and sometimes do 

 not come up until the succeeding spring, and even later. Until 

 the fifth year they are of very slow growth, and require pro- 

 tection; after which the growth is rapid — increasing from one 

 to three feet annually. Moses Field, of Leverett, a member of 

 the committee, to whom we are indebted for specimens of the 

 annual growth of several species of forest trees, left with us a 

 white pine whose growth equalled two feet nine inches last 

 year, and two feet eleven inches the past season. 



The white pine has been cultivated both in England and 

 France, and has been found to grow in height from fifteen 



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