No. 4.] FOlilvSTKY JK MASSACHUSETTS. 73 



The Chair, Wc have time for the discussion of this 

 subject and for the answering of questions by the lecturer, 

 or statements of experience. Discussion will often bring out 

 points we need to ha:ve light upon. I want to hear a word 

 of experience from Mr. Augustus Pratt of Middleborough. 



Mr. Pratt. The lecture contains many facts which set 

 us, as citizens of Massachusetts, to thinking. It is a fact, 

 which no one can dispute, that our building material is 

 becoming less and less every year, and when we go abroad 

 to other States for this material we find it necessary to pay 

 much larger prices than we did a few years ago. 



Reference has been made to the white pine. It is an 

 excellent building material for us, and it can be grown here 

 in the future at a profit, I believe, to the growers. It is 

 true that forty or fifty years is a long time to look ahead for 

 a crop. Why could not the State exempt entirely from 

 taxation waste land, thousands and thousands of acres of 

 Avhich we have in our Commonwealth, not worth some of it 

 more than a dollar an acre, if the owners would plant it to 

 white pine? Who can tell what the price of pine lumber 

 will be fifty years from now ? 



Some fiftj^-five years ago, when I was about eighteen 

 years of age, my father told me that I might take certain 

 pieces of land, one piece of 10 acres and another of 5 acres, 

 and plant them to white pine. I gathered the seed in the 

 fall, and in the spring went on with the men and i)lanted 

 that land to white pine seed. I harvested all of the 10 

 acres, and a part of the 5-acre lot, and some of the trees on 

 the smaller lot are still standing. Two of the acres of the 

 larger lot, selecting the very best trees, yielded upwards of 

 50 cords of box logs to the acre. I cannot put that into 

 thousand feet of boards, because our system is to put in 

 three-quarter inch or five-eighth inch box boards ; selling it 

 by the cord measure, it gave upwards of 50 cords to the 

 acre. The rest of it gave 40 to 45 cords to the acre. It 

 was a profitable crop, and T was very foolish not to continue 

 it from year to year with waste lands I could have bought at 

 a low price. 



Question. How did you plant the seed? 



