96 PLYMOUTH SOCIETY. 



from our commons, extensive tracts, now useless, might in 

 twenty years be covered with a thick growth of white birch, 

 ripe for the axe ; or in thirty years with a growth of white pine, 

 some of which would be large enough for ranging timber, and 

 all this merely for the labor of gathering the seed and scattering 

 on the land. 



The seed of birch can be easily gathered any time from the 

 20th of October till the winter. And in many situations this 

 will be found the most profitable wood for fuel, and some other 

 purposes, that can be cultivated. 



The seed of white pine must be gathered very soon after the 

 first autumnal frosts. When it is wanted in large quantities, 

 the most expeditious method of obtaining it, would be to cut 

 down large trees, each of which would yield an abundance of 

 seed. The cones of the pitch pine often grow so near the 

 ground, they can be easily reached; these do not so readily open 

 as those of the white pine, and therefore it is less important for 

 us to be very exact in the time of gathering. 



The pines and birch, which seem best adapted to soils that 

 are likely to be used as forests in this county, are produced with 

 so little expense of labor, we may be permitted to wonder that 

 something of earlier attention was not given to the subject. 

 Cheap and plenty as wood and timber have been in our country, 

 a growth of any kind of wood, in the last half century, was 

 greatly preferable to a state of barrenness. 



In one of. the lots above described, acorns have been planted, 

 and, notwithstanding the poverty of the soil, the trees promise 

 ultimately to amount, to something ; those which have been cut 

 down in the spring, after they were three or four years old, 

 have sent out shoots which are straighter and something more 

 thrifty than the original shoots from the acorns. 



If forests of the several kinds of oak are raised, it will be ad- 

 visable to plant the acorns in regular rows, and plough and hoe 

 among the young trees for several years, as we do in fields of 

 Indian corn. The accelerated growth of the trees will amply 

 pay somebody, if not the performer, for the labor. The white 

 oak, in particular, as it ordinarily stands in the forest, is slow 

 in growth, but cultivation will bring it to maturity in about half 

 a century. 



