WOOD LOTS AND WOOD CROPS 127 



roughly ploughed furrows. For others, the seed 

 has to be sown in nursery beds and the resultant 

 young plants later set out, while for others again, 

 such as willows and poplar, young green cutting are 

 simply thrust into the ground and left to grow. The 

 reading of some forest primers would seem to 

 indicate that these were complicated processes, but 

 to the farmers they are merely the adaptation of 

 ordinary agricultural methods. Grain is sown, 

 tomatoes, onions and the like are set out in the 

 form of little seedlings previously started in a hot 

 bed, and other plants, such as berries, are propa- 

 gated from green shoots. For the past few years 

 prudent grangers in Vermont have been setting out 

 an average of four or five hundred thousand forest 

 seedlings each spring, and reports show that at 

 least eighty per cent, of these youngsters are 

 developing into sturdy trees. 



After the wood-lot is once started cultivation may 

 be naturally regulated by the density of the leaf 

 canopy, thus keeping down the weeds and permitting 

 the formation of humus from rotting leaves, twigs 

 and branches. Under such a plan the forest will 

 ordinarily reproduce itself indefinitely. If weeds 

 are particularly persistent, as is often the case in 

 the open form of growth required for developing 

 large crowns on sugar maples, limited grazing of 



