ASPECTS OF THE PRESENT FORESTRY AGITATION. 145 



At the present juncture there is quite another aspect to this tree 

 phinting. Disguise it as we may, the unpleasant fact remains for 

 our contemplation, that there has been a marked fall in the value 

 of farm lauds. We need not inquire how this has come about. 

 It were better and more appropriate to our subject to inquire 

 what shall we do under the circumstances. Probably nowhere in 

 this country, unless we except some small areas where market 

 gardening is carried on, do we make the most out of our acres. 

 Compare Massachusetts or Pennsylvania with Belgium, and I 

 think the case will be a clear one. This leads to the inquiry : 

 Have we not been dissipating our energies over too large an area 

 in all agricultural work? Should we not have gained more by 

 careful culture of ten acres, than by slovenly treatment of twenty ? 

 Indeed, would not the smaller area, so treated, have been both 

 more productive and more cheaply managed? If the question 

 should receive, as I am inclined to think probable, an affirmative 

 answer, then the conclusion follows, that there would remain an 

 equal area for some other use. Land in cultivation tends, on the 

 whole, toward impoverishment. It requires constant use of 

 fertilizers. But land in forest tends toward increase of fertility. 

 The annual fall and decay of foliage returns to the soil not only 

 as much nutriment as the growth of the trees removed from it, 

 but more. My suggestion then is, unless some better plan be 

 offered, that on those unused acres trees should be planted. Sup- 

 pose you are to use the land iu ten years. If you plant judiciously, 

 in that time your young shoots will be large enough to pay for 

 removal, and the soil will have been enriched by the leaves they 

 have furnished. It cannot be that this depreciation of farm land 

 is to be permanent. In the not distant future the available 

 desirable locations of the West and South will have been taken 

 up, and the wave of home-seeking humanity, which has so long 

 been moving westward with a force as resistless as the waves of 

 the Atlantic, will, like those same waves, flow back toward the 

 East, and mingle again with the masses from which they originally 

 came. Happy he who then has a surplus holding here ! 



At the close of Professor Rothrock's lecture, a vote of thanks 

 for his interesting and instructive paper was unanimously passed. 



10 



