FOREST FIRES. 293 



June, or until they had begun to make some growth, but 

 they must not be frozen or dried ; out of the ground a very 

 slight exposure to our hot, drying winds is fatal to ever- 

 greens. I do not say that it is necessary to put the trees into 

 nursery rows, but I spoke of the fact that I had done so ; 

 and I believe in transplanting trees from the seedling beds 

 before planting in the forests. Every farmer can frequently 

 find the material on his farm, or in the immediate vicinity of 

 it, to transplant hundreds and thousands of trees, from year 

 to year, and have his farm keep up its growth of wood. 

 Instead of having old pastures, hardly worth turning cattle 

 upon, he may have trees growing there that in twenty or 

 thirty years will be worth twenty times what the pasture is 

 for grazing. I have seen timber that was worth two or 

 three hundred dollars an acre growing on land that, without 

 the trees, would not have been worth five dollars an acre. 



I would not confine my remarks to white pine. White 

 ash is a good tree in some soils, and the maple, white oak 

 and red oak, also. Out here in the street is a rock maple 

 tree eleven feet and six inches in circumference ; somebody 

 living remembers when it was planted. The silver maple 

 will make more wood in a given number of years than any 

 other tree. The Scotch larch is a good tree to plant ; it can 

 be transplanted easily, and will grow well. Part of the 

 trees upon Mr. R. S. Fay's place at Lynn were Scotch 

 larches, some of which they have cut down for telegraph 

 poles recently. I was there and saw Mr. Fay in 1857, 

 when the trees were twenty feet high ; he planted his forest 

 eight years before, with larches and various other kinds. I 

 did not go there again until 1879, when I saw young Mr. 

 Fay, and some of the trees that I saw there in 1857, twenty- 

 two years before, that were then three or four inches through 

 and ten to twenty feet high, were two feet in diameter. 



The only partial remedy I know for forest fires is to 

 keep out the undergrowth, and thin out the trees. Then, if 

 a tire gets into the forest, it will not kill many of them ; but 

 if you leave the trees to grow up thickly, and let the under- 

 growth remain, a fire will have a much more deadly ellcct. 



Mr. Shepard. We have other forest trees that are per- 

 haps quite as valuable as pines in certain sections and tl at 



