No. 4.] FORESTRY IN MASSACHUSETTS. 65 



release? You may .sa}'' that this fio;urin<r is all theoretical, 

 and I admit it ; but it is based on measurements and experi- 

 ence elsewhere, even with loss vigorous growers than the 

 white pine, and with less care. 



Your own Mr. Pratt has reported in your proceedings 

 that, without any attention in the Avay of thinning, by sowing- 

 pine and leaving it to nature unaided to do what it pleased, 

 he had secured, in less than fifty years, 50 and even 60 cords 

 of box-board logs per acre, or as many hundred cubic feet, 

 with some of the trees 2 feet or more in diameter. And 

 among the many measurements which some years ago I had 

 had made of naturall}^ grown pine groves in New England, 

 there was at least one (near Hopkinton, N. H.) which at 

 sixty to sixty-five years of age, with 300 trees, showed 7,870 

 cubic feet of wood, with diameters varying from 8 to 23 

 inches, and averaging~14 inches, and heights mostly between 

 70 and 80 feet.* This is what nature unaided has done. I 

 submit that my claim for the result from an intelligent guid- 

 ance of nature is modest. 



While, then, the tax release cannot be considered much 

 of an encouragement, a just taxation is what everybody, 

 even the forest planter, should be satisfied with. And, if 

 not the land alone is to be taxed, but also its product, and 

 encouragement is needed in the forest-planting business, 

 then let it take the form which prevails in some parts of 

 German}^ and which is justifiable and reasonable, namely, 

 not to collect the tax until the harvest is cut. If, for 

 instance, the annual tax were 20 cents, let it accumulate 

 with 3 per cent to the sixtieth year, when it will amount to 

 about $35, which comes easy to pay when $600 are in sight 

 as a result of the harvest. 



Other methods of encouragement are the giving of boun- 

 ties, which in principle stands on the same order as the tax 

 release, — not only difficult to formulate rationally, difficult 

 to administer, and insufiicient unless other stronger induce- 

 ments exist, which would by themselves make forest growing 

 inviting. Moreover, does not the man who takes an exist- 



* See United States Department of Agriculture, Forestry Division, Bulletin 

 No. 22, " The white pine." 



